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STUDIES 

IN 

RELIGIOUS NURTURE 


BY 

A. B. BUNN VAN ORMER. 

M 


PHILADELPHIA, PA.! 

LUTHERAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY. 








Copyright, 1908, by the Lutheran Publication Society. 




UBHARY of "c<)NasSsJ 

Two Copies 

APR 9 1900 

iouyrurui t/ury 

A AXc. Nu 

i ±Ur l 2f 




TO 

EDWARD 









CONTENTS 


I. 

PAGE 

Orientation of the Problem of Reeigious 
Nurture. 5 

II. 

Are Our Present Methods of Bibee Schooe 

Work Adequate?. 19 

III. 

What May the Bibee Schooe Learn from the 

Secuear Schooe?. 29 

IV. 

In Defence of Earey Reeigious Instruction. 51 

V. 

A Study of a Criticism of the Bibee Schooe. 73 

VI. 

Why the Weakness?. 99 

VII. 

Bibee Schooe Work and Chied-Study.113 

(m) 






IV 


Contents . 


VIII. 

PAGE 

The Doctrine of Interest.127 

IX. 

Children’s Interests in the Bible.149 

X. 

The Child and the Story.163 

XI. 

The Bible and the Child.181 

XII. 

An Interrogation of Christian Education . . 201 

XIII. 

The Age of Spiritual Awakening.241 

After-Word.293 









I. 

ORIENTATION OF THE PROBEEM OP 
RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 



























Studies in Religious 
Nurture. 


ORIENTATION OF THE PROBLEM OF 
RELIGIOUS NURTURE. 

What attitude shall persons interested in 
religious work take to the problem of spiritual 
nurture ? Or shall they have a conscious and 
deliberatively-chosen attitude ? 

If they are seeking for guidance, if they are 
conscious of imperfection in their work, if 
they long for a greater fruitage of consecrated 
lives from those worked with, if they believe 
that there may be, somewhere, conditions 
that have as yet been ignored, it will be well 
for them to carefully determine their attitude 
to the problem. And it is hard to think of 
anyone engaged in religious work who, in 
the face of the possibilities open to, and of 
( 7 ) 



8 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

the responsibilities resting on, the religious 
worker, can feel quite at ease in satisfaction 
with the efforts put forth or the results 
achieved. 

In other words, the question of an attitude 
to this problem is a question for all religious 
workers. 

It is true that some may take their attitude 
without reflecting much on the grounds for 
doing so, may drift into it under the influence 
of imitation and of transmitted practices and 
methods, or be carried to it on the current 
of deduction from some partial or inade¬ 
quately supported “ general principle.’’ But 
it is wiser to make the attitude a conscious 
one, and to adopt it only after deliberation. 
By so doing there will enter into the attitude 
any elements that might unconsciously have 
worked for good, and elements that otherwise 
would have gone unrecognized are more likely 
to be given a place of usefulness. 

That we may the more truthfully approach 
the problem of religious nurture, let us dwell 
awhile together on some attitudes that, 
whether consciously or unconsciously held, 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 


9 


though each contains truth, are inadequate. 
And, having found elements of truth in these 
several attitudes, a construction of an ade¬ 
quate attitude out of these elements can be 
attempted. 

Despite the too prevalent tendency to ignore 
the work of the Holy Spirit in the affairs of 
men, there are doubtless many whose concep¬ 
tion of religious nurture makes it an affair of 
the Holy Spirit almost entirely. Such look 
askance at any effort to investigate the problem 
with a view of rendering the work done more 
effective. They shrink from such study, lest 
by it they should in some way discredit the 
Spirit’s work, should show a lack of reliance 
upon Him, and because of this lack of re¬ 
liance should not have His aid. 

Others there are who write and act as if 
the problem of religious nurture were entirely 
within our hands, easily within our compre¬ 
hension. These write of methods and con¬ 
ditions, of devices and incentives, of laws and 
principles, until we are led to forget the Holy 
Spirit and to view the problem manwardly. 

This is an attitude that is peculiarly per- 


io Studies in Religious Nurture. 

suasive for its own acceptance, in that it 
unduly exalts man and his powers of com¬ 
prehension. Theories and attitudes that plead 
with us in the name of our power to think 
win from us a measure of acceptance for them¬ 
selves that may often turn us from the path 
of truth to lose us in the maze of hypotheses 
and unbased inferences. 

There exists a variation of this attitude 
that, by finding in the laws and principles of 
child-life the results of God’s handiwork, 
claims to honor the Spirit all the more by 
employing these laws of His creative enact¬ 
ment. But there is to be found in connec¬ 
tion with this attitude a failure to give the 
Spirit His rightful place. 

These attitudes are defective. They fail 
to give to the Holy Spirit the pre-eminence 
due to Him and His function, failing thus 
even when seeking His honor. And they 
lose sight of the complexity of the problem 
of religious nurture. The first theory makes 
the problem a simple one by reducing the 
processes of nurture to terms of incompre¬ 
hensibility. Nurture is the Spirit’s function, 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 11 

and of His working we can know nothing. 
Hence the simple problem—just let the Spirit 
do the work He must do, and drift along in 
our practices as those before us did, looking 
for nothing better. 

The second attitude makes the problem a 
simple one by making it too comprehensible 
—a thing we can fully understand, and easily 
too. This is in accord with a tendency of the 
day. Detecting this tendency, Henry Davies, 
of Yale, has written : 

“ The new psychology underestimates the 

complexity of the child mind .” 1 

The child-mind, as we shall see, is not the 
only source of complexity for our problem; 
but it is a source. 

These two attitudes have their character¬ 
istic dangers. One thinking the problem 
wholly incomprehensible, and one thinking 
the problem too comprehensible, will both 
stop far short of the duty and of the privi¬ 
lege of a religious worker. 

The right attitude towards the problem of 
religious nurture is not a new attitude. How 

1 “ International Journal of Ethics.” 


12 Studies in Religimis Nurture . 

many “new” things in educational thought 
wear the age-betokening crown of glory ! In 
the writings of John Amos Comenius, the Mora¬ 
vian Bishop and educational reformer, who, 
some think, was once called to the presidency 
of Harvard University, we find expression 
given to the attitude which religious workers 
should hold to the problem of religious nurture: 
“ For God . . . through His Holy Ghost 
and by the intervention of natural means.” 1 

“ The Holy Spirit usually employs natu¬ 
ral agencies, and has chosen parents, teach¬ 
ers, and ministers. . . .” 2 
This attitude has room for complexity. 
And the problem is a complex one, indeed. 
The complex nature of the soul was seen and 
felt by Wordsworth when he wrote: 

“Not chaos, not 

The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, 

Nor aught of blinder vacancy scooped out 
By help of dreams, can breed such fear and awe 
As fall upon us often when we look 
Into our minds.” 3 

1 “ Great Didactic,” London, page 201. 

2 Ib. y page 371. 

3 Preface to the “Excursion.” 


Studies in Religious Ntiriure. 


13 


And when President Hall confesses that 
to him there is but one thing more awful 
than Kant’s starry heavens, “The body and 
soul of a child,” he but gives expression to a 
recognition of the complex nature of the soul. 

But the use of “ usually ” in the second of 
the quotations that deal with God’s ways of 
working, leaves room for such an enlargement 
of our notion of the problem’s complexity as 
makes room for the Holy Spirit’s working in 
ways that are beyond our comprehension. 

Who that has had experience in religious 
work has not had evidences of the Spirit’s 
working in ways to man incomprehensible? 
Nor is science, sane and candid, willing to 
deny the possibility of the Holy Spirit’s oper¬ 
ating without the mediation of the usual 
agencies. Professor James, in his series of 
Gifford lectures on Natural Religion, given 
at the University of Edinburgh, says: 

“ But if you, being orthodox Christians, 
ask me, as a psychologist, whether the 
reference of a phenomenon to a subliminal 
self does not exclude the notion of the 
direct presence of the Deity altogether, I 


14 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

have to say frankly that as a psychologist 
I do not see why it necessarily should.” 1 
On the other hand, the use of “ usually,” 
with what follows it, asserts the great fact 
of the Spirit’s employment of means in the 
accomplishment of His work. To His work 
religious nurture belongs. Comenius sees in¬ 
strumentalities for the Spirit’s use in parents, 
teachers, and ministers ; in both their precepts 
and their lives the Spirit finds instrumentali¬ 
ties. He uses personality, an incarnation of 
truth, as a herald of better and of nobler things. 
This thought of our co-operating with God 
and being used by Him is one that ennobles 
work and lifts the worker to the plane whence 
no one can see life as anything but very much 
worth living. The sustaining force of such 
consciousness is beautifully shown in the life 
of Horace Mann, who was heard to say, 
when near life’s close : 

“ I, too, have been a co-worker with God, 
for the uplifting of humanity through the 
public schools, free to all.” 

1,4 Varieties of Religious Experience,” page 242. 
[Italics ours.] 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 15 

Such reflections comforted and cheered and 
sustained him when discouragements were on 
every hand. 

And, beyond this, we can read into the 
Comenian attitude the fact that the Spirit 
operates through the laws of our mental life. 
To one whose life-philosophy is theistic there 
are of necessity such laws. He could not con¬ 
ceive of God as operating in any capricious, 
fortuitous way. God’s very nature makes 
such a conception of His activities impossible 
to us. To comprehend these laws is to think 
God’s thoughts after Him. To employ such 
laws is to work in harmony with God to the 
accomplishment of ends God has set for us to 
reach. To Froebel, who has much to say of 
God in his “ Education of Man,” there are 
such laws. He says: 

“ I am firmly convinced that all the 
phenomena of the child-world, those which 
delight us as well as those which grieve us, 
depend upon fixed laws as definite as those 
of the cosmos, the planetary system, and 
the operations of nature; and it is there¬ 
fore possible to discover them and examine 


16 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

them. When once we know and have 
assimilated these laws, we shall be able 
powerfully to counteract any retrograde 
and faulty tendencies in the children, and 
to encourage, at the same time, all that is 
good and virtuous.” 1 

Nor is it the avowed theist alone who sees 
written within the nature of the child these 
laws. The whole mission of the psychologist, 
as a scientist and irrespective of a theistic as 
of an atheistic life-philosophy, is to search for 
such laws and to describe them when found. 
When he does not believe in God (the cases 
are rare) he finds these laws so unmistakably 
operating in human nature that out of them 
he u organizes guidance ” in all realms save the 
religious. 

These laws are the “ natural agencies ” at 
the disposal of the Spirit. May we not con¬ 
clude, then, that when we use them we are 
facilitating the work of the Holy Spirit and 
are thereby making ourselves more efficient 
agents in His hands? If this inference is 

1 The Letters of Froebel, quoted in Warner Library of 
Literature, page 6031. 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 17 

legitimate, there is a vital corollary connected 
with it. We must seek to understand more 
and more fully these laws that we may the 
more effectively apply them, that through us 
the Spirit may the more efficiently work in 
securing religious nurture that shall result in 
complete life-surrender to and service of the 
Christ. 

But, having done all we can to discover 
these laws—temporarily or partially hidden 
from us for God’s own wise reasons, we doubt 
not—and using them as best we know or can 
learn how, let us not lose sight of the fact 
that our heavenly Father is ever willing to 
give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him so 
to do, and that the Spirit can work in ways 
incomprehensible to us in the accomplishment 
of the Father’s will. 

All this is 11 orthodox,” we confess. But it 
is not here asserted because it is “ orthodox.” 
It is asserted, rather, because, as we see it, it 
is orthodox—it is the right thinking, the true 
attitude, the right attitude, the attitude forced 
upon one whose mind is open to influences 
and to guidance from both science and revela- 


18 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

tion. The attitude has nothing to fear from 
the over-zealous advocates of either of these 
sources of guidance. It can be safely assumed 
by any religious worker who is really con¬ 
cerned with the great problem of soul nurture. 
And, being assumed, this attitude makes pos¬ 
sible the putting under contribution of every 
or of any branch of science, to the end that 
helpfulness and light may be gotten. Nor does 
it compel us to rely alone on the unsatisfac¬ 
tory finality of these sources. Wise is the 
religious worker who, after he has done all he 
can do, bends the knees to Him whose glory 
he seeks in the doing of the work. Eternity 
alone will make possible a computation of the 
potency of the bent knees ! 


II. 

ARE OUR PRESENT METHODS OP 
BIBLE SCHOOL WORK ADEQUATE? 


/ 


ARB OUR PRESENT METHODS OF 
BIBEE SCHOOE WORK ADEQUATE ? 1 


Sometimes under pressure for a categorical 
answer we feel constrained to reply in ways 
that are misunderstood by those hearing us. 
If pressed for a categorical answer to the 
question asked, our answer would be negative ; 
we would subject ourselves, in giving this 
answer, to adverse criticism, might be exposed 
to the charge of disloyalty to the great cause 
of the Bible School, accused of a lack of sym¬ 
pathy with the work, and have other things 
said whose common characteristic would be 
that which is common and applicable to the 
things specified, namely, that they are not 
true. 

But fortunately there is no pressure for an 
answer that is brief. Our liberty in answer¬ 
ing is not even limited by your forbearance in 
hearing. 

1 Read to Ministerial Union, General Synod Lutheran, 
of Philadelphia. 

(21) 


22 Studies in Religious Nurture, 

And how shall the question be answered ? 
To answer it negatively (if authoritatively 
and generally so answered) might sow seeds of 
discouragement in ground already prepared 
for the sowing and having promise of an 
abundant yield. To answer it negatively (if 
authoritatively and generally so answered) 
might, on the other hand, give impetus to 
movements looking towards better and better 
things; yes, even longingly to the best things 
for the spiritual nurture of young people. 

An affirmative answer to the question is 
fraught, perhaps, with even more danger than 
is a negative one. If there were to prevail 
among Bible School workers the impression 
that present methods, conceptions, compre¬ 
hension of their work are adequate, it would 
engender a self-satisfaction that would make 
further development undesired, and therefore 
impossible ; a result truly lamentable if the 
facts in the case should prove the affirmative 
answer to be an incorrect one. 

And yet, in practice, if not in theory, an af¬ 
firmative answer is being given to this question 
continually by many workers. The answer thus 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 


23 


given may be accounted for by temperament— 
a factor that needs to be more adequately com¬ 
prehended and more extensively applied in re¬ 
ligious work. To some people finality is so 
desirable that the least semblance of it is suffi¬ 
cient to justify a resting on the oars. To some 
the present, and its methods and conceptions 
—on the theory that whatever is is best—are 
not to be minimized by the supposition that 
they could in any way be improved upon. 
To some this sense of the sufficiency, of the 
adequacy of the methods of the present is 
peculiarly pleasant and satisfying. It has 
naught of impulsion to further search for 
helpfulness ; it moves along the lines of least 
resistance ; it enables one to do the work re¬ 
quired without having the additional burden of 
trying to discover how that work may be better 
done, so done as to secure a larger fruitage. 

In answering a question such as this, one 
dare not frame his answer to avoid results 
that might attend the acceptance of the answer. 
The facts alone should be the guide and should 
be allowed to be determinative of the end to 
which they lead. 


24 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

Are Bible School methods adequate? To 
what ? To the accomplishment of the mission 
of the Bible School. And this mission is that 
of so ministering to the members of the school 
as to secure in the fullest possible measure the 
growth and the development of their spiritual 
life, a development that shall include the 
public confession of the Christ and the dedica¬ 
tion of the life to His service. Surely adequacy 
to this end is nothing easily attained. And 
we refuse to allow the end to be otherwise 
defined for us, to let it be degraded to the 
matter of attendance, of large contributions, 
of having studied certain portions of the Bible, 
certain truths of geography, of history. 

Approaching the question in the light of 
the end of the methods, it seems that the facts 
forbid a categorical “yes” or “no” to the 
question that is set us for our perplexity. 
They rather demand that both affirmation and 
negation enter into the answer. 

So far as one phase of our work is concerned 
there is adequacy in our methods. This phase 
is that of the instrumentalities placed at our 
disposal by Him whom we serve in our Bible 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 


25 


School work. These instrumentalities are the 
Word of God and the Holy Spirit, whose in¬ 
strument the Word is. These are both avail¬ 
able, and, we believe, are in some measure 
relied upon by most teachers and workers in 
the Bible School. In so far as these are used, 
relied on, there is adequacy in our methods 
from one point of view. 

We would not have this adequacy so in¬ 
tensely and over-zealously defined as to leave 
no room in the Bible School curriculum for 
the co-ordination of religious literature with 
the work of the school. Nor would we have 
present-day or recent Christian biographies 
eliminated. Both literature and biography 
objectify and intensify (so far as effectiveness 
to young people is concerned) Biblical truths. 

There remain the two standpoints’ of the 
teacher and of the pupil from which to view 
our question. And viewing the question from 
either of these, or from both of them, it 
must surely be seen, if vision is not defective, 
(and there are things that cause defective vision 
here as elsewhere,) that there is at least a con¬ 
siderable element of inadequacy. 


26 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

The inadequacy from the point of view of 
the teacher may really be made to compre¬ 
hend that from the point of view of the pupil. 
The teacher’s inadequacy may manifest itself 
in what is fundamental to all our religious 
work, namely, life. Every uplift of the 
teacher into the nobler, truer Christian man¬ 
hood or womanhood diminishes this inade¬ 
quacy. This inadequacy of life, this failure 
to live the truths taught, can and will neu¬ 
tralize, if not counteract, an adequacy along 
other lines. 

And yet the second line of adequacy, that 
of a comprehension of the laws implanted in 
children whereby they grow religiously, spirit¬ 
ually, is by no means an insignificant mat¬ 
ter. We fear that this is often belittled. But 
this fact argues more against the mental ade¬ 
quacy of the belittler than against the use in 
our work of the laws of God as they are writ¬ 
ten in the child, as they manifest themselves 
in the child’s development. 

We have no reason to believe that the last 
word on child-life has been written. Every 
year adds to our knowledge of the child. And 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 27 

until we can feel that the last word on child- 
life has been written, we may not justly con¬ 
tend in an unqualified way that our Bible 
School methods are adequate. 


















































III. 

WHAT MAY THE BIBEE SCHOOE 
LEARN FROM THE SECULAR 
SCHOOL? 


WHAT MAY THE BIBEE SCHOOE 
EEARN FROM THE SECUEAR 
SCHOOE? 

“Earge numbers of religious teachers, 
most intelligent and zealous in their piety, 
seek a more and more perfect adoption 
of the secular school methods.”—Commis¬ 
sioner W. T. Harris. 1 

Those who have the means of knowing 
somewhat of what is being done to-day in 
Bible School work are ready to grant the truth¬ 
fulness of the assertion of the late Commis¬ 
sioner of Education. 

The tendency he has detected certainly exists 
—is widely prevalent, if it is not rapidly grow¬ 
ing. At this fact, in view of conditions and 
activity in the secular school world, and in 
view of the constitution of man as a social 
being, we need not be surprised. But, unless 
that is best which is, unless the things which 
1 Report for 1896-97, xxiv. 

(31) 


32 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

are, are because of their survival through fit¬ 
ness, it may not be amiss to interrogate this 
tendency; to inquire as to the “ whither ” of 
it, though we may not now care to look into 
the whence in any detail. 

Underlying this tendency to adopt from the 
secular school is the most encouraging feature 
about Bible School work as it exists to-day: 
a willingness to learn; a dissatisfaction with 
its present achievements; its dream of a day 
of greater usefulness, when it shall have arrived 
at a more adequate comprehension of the per- 
plexingly difficult problem of religious nur¬ 
ture and of its relation thereto. As never 
before the Bible School is asserting its dignified 
function, and is putting under contribution to 
helpfulness any material that bears the cre¬ 
dentials of serviceability and reliability. It is 
turning in its search for aid to the secular 
school and adopting therefrom. It is, in many 
instances, wisely questioning before its adop¬ 
tion. But it questions only that it may take 
into itself the really valuable. It loses not 
sight of its desire for development, for increased 
efficiency, working as it does under many 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 


33 


handicaps. But it is becoming loath to in¬ 
corporate into itself practices that have not 
been subjected to the crucible of calm and 
critical reflection, in the light of its own aim 
and of the materials at its disposal. 

But the tendency to adopt the secular school 
methods has underlying it also an assumption 
that is unjustified and, for the Bible School in¬ 
tent on adoption, unsafe. The tendency is un¬ 
derlaid by the assumption of the adoptability, 
the adaptability, of secular methods; the as¬ 
sumption of the perfection of the secular school 
whereby it may serve at once as a determinator 
of an end for the Bible School and as a source 
whence methods of reaching that end may be 
gotten. Secular school workers who unsympa¬ 
thetically criticise the Bible School are more or 
less swayed by this assumption, and, through 
the comparative terms in which they couch 
their criticisms, generate the assumption on 
the part of Bible School workers. 

But there is no ground whatever for the 
assumption. On the other hand, the secular 
school itself, as it is found in theory, is reach¬ 
ing out hands that appeal for help. Speaking 
3 


34 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

of the elementary school, Ossian H. Lang, of 
the New York School Journal , says : 

“ . . . The need of a thorough reconstruc¬ 
tion of the elementary school is being keenly 
felt. Cautious proceeding here is a rule of 
wisdom.” 1 

And, looking through and beyond the evi¬ 
dences of “ results ”—percentages, exhibition 
work, commencement essays, prizes, honors, 
diplomas, and the rest—till his gaze falls on 
the child, the only educational touchstone, Pro¬ 
fessor Baldwin, of Johns Hopkins University, 
says: 

“ Every time we send a child out of the 
home to the school, we subject him to 
experiment of the most serious and alarm¬ 
ing kind. ... It is perfectly certain that 
two out of every three children are irre¬ 
trievably damaged or hindered in their 
mental and moral development in the 
school.” 2 

Nor are these opinions as yet antiquated. 

1 Forum, 1903, page 264. 

2 “Mental Development in the Child and the Race,” 
page 38. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 35 

Mr. Parsons’ article on “ Making Education 
Hit the Mark,” says : 

“ School boards are all too regularly 
composed of men ignorant of that which 
they prescribe; college councils are the 
scene of faction and of misshapen com¬ 
promise. Blinding to both, and to the pub¬ 
lic as well, is the confusion and forgetful¬ 
ness of aim. We must clear up our notions 
as to what we want to do in our public 
schools; we must separate and distinguish 
our various aims; we must direct our edu¬ 
cation straight; we must find out where we 
wish to go, or we shall continue to arrive 
nowhere.” 1 

And in a somewhat recent article in “ Edu¬ 
cation,” by Frederick E. Bolton, of the Iowa 
State University, we read : 

“ The public schools need a copious bap¬ 
tism of scholarship and much improved 
methods.” 

In these assertions, whatever else there may 
be, there is that that justifies the assertion 
that to assume the perfection of the secular 
1 The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1906. 


36 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

school is to go far wide of the facts. If we 
borrow, or adopt, or learn from the secular 
school, we should do so with a fixed concep¬ 
tion of its present imperfect, nascent condition. 

A comparison of the two institutions should 
furnish help in arriving at an answer to the 
question under consideration. And the insti¬ 
tutions lend themselves to such comparison, 
revealing similarities and contrasts that should 
be taken account of. The comparison may be 
made along several lines. We may consider 
the object dealt with by the two institutions ; 
the subject-matter dealt with and the conse¬ 
quent methods used; and the respective aims, 
giving as they do more or less direction to the 
procedures found in the institutions. 

In considering the object dealt with, the 
difficulty of definition and choice of terms 
arises. Use the term of your preference, be it 
mind, soul, spirit, ego, consciousness; and you 
may safely grant that the object dealt with by 
the two institutions is one and the same object . 
The question of dichotomy or trichotomy is, 
for our present concern, an indifferent one, 
leaving unaffected the affirmation just made. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 37 

Our concern is rather with the question of the 
older “faculty” way of thinking of mental 
activity, as over against the newer “func¬ 
tional ” way of viewing it. It is no longer 
necessary for us to posit a distinct faculty 
whereby spiritual things are apprehended ; we 
dare now conceive of the mind turning in its 
entirety to the contemplation of an object of 
thought, be that object material or immaterial, 
ethical or non-ethical, “ secular ” or religious. 
A religious or spiritual state of mind is such 
not because a special “ faculty ” is functioning, 
but because the mind is functioning upon 
subject-matter that is religious or spiritual. 
So far as this applies to ethical matters, this 
conception is clearly expressed by Porter. He 
says: 

“ It follows that the moral nature, or the 
moral faculty, are but other names for the 
human faculties (mind) when employed 
upon a special subject-matter , and in a 
peculiar manner. The products of this 
special but natural mode of activity are 
moral ideas and moral emotions.” 1 
1 “ Elements of Moral Science,” page 138. 


38 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

May we not safely hold to the same view in 
matters of the religious life? Careful intro¬ 
spection fails to bring to light any procedure 
other than this as taking place within the 
mind at a time when the mental complex may 
be called a “religious state of mind.” 

If we can accept this view of religious 
mental states ; if we can hold that— 

“. . . Religious love is only man’s natural 
emotion of love directed to a religious 
object; religious fear is only the ordinary 
fear of commerce, so to speak, the common 
quaking of the human breast in so far as 
the notion of divine retribution may arouse 
it; religious awe is the same organic thrill 
which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in 
a mountain gorge; only this time it comes 
over us at the thought of our supernatural 
relations ; and similarly of all the various 
sentiments which may be called into play 
in the lives of religious persons,” 1 
then we have a conception that will prove 
serviceable and fruitful in a degree impossible 
to the “ special faculty ” conception. It is 
1 James’ “ Varieties of Religious Experience,” page 27. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 


39 


only by virtue of this conception that, from 
the viewpoint of the object dealt with, there 
is to be found a basis for expecting helpful¬ 
ness from the secular school for the work of 
the Bible School. But this same conception 
of the nature of religious mental states makes 
it evident that there are very pronounced 
limitations to this helpfulness, so long as our 
consideration of it moves along the line of the 
object with which the two institutions deal. 

In comparing the two institutions as to 
both subject-matter and aim it may be well to 
draw sharply the line of demarcation between 
the school as it is and the school as it might 
be. Were our concern with the school as it 
might be, should be, as it sometime will be, 
the treatment of these two sections would be 
different and the Bible School would find 
much, very much, which it could safely borrow. 
But there is a marked discrepancy between 
the school as it is and as it should be. Yet the 
borrowing goes on from the school as it is. 

The subject-matter of the secular school as 
it exists is largely of such a nature as to de¬ 
mand an inductive presentation of itself, a 


40 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

presentation that rises step by step, carefully 
and by means of analysis and final synthesis 
of common and essential elements, to the 
general truth or principle in the light of which 
individual cases are studied and come to be 
understood. This process is descriptive of some 
teaching as it is, and of teaching as it should 
be, in much of the work of the secular school. 

Yet there is often need of authoritative 
teaching, even in dealing with subject-matter 
that has been treated in this inductive way by 
scholars walking the pathway of original in¬ 
vestigation. 

Practical limitations—those of inadequate 
laboratory equipment; the lack of training 
on the part of teachers for the carrying on 
of the more complicated demonstrations; the 
time limitations imposed by the course of 
study, itself an expression of the impatience 
of society to get its members into a produc¬ 
tive stage—compel many a resort to authority 
even when dealing with subject-matter capa¬ 
ble of a different treatment. This is true of 
much work in college and university, as well 
as in high and grammar and primary schools. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 41 

We may even say that this resort to authority 
in places where it is possible for the actual 
processes to be gone through with is necessi¬ 
tated by the principle of “ division of labor,” 
and that it, operating in the line of this prin¬ 
ciple, really makes further scientific develop¬ 
ment possible. 

But not all of the subject-matter of the 
secular school is capable of this inductive, 
analytic, generalizing treatment. The whole 
realm of history is one in which the final 
appeal is one of reliance on what someone 
has said or written about what has been done. 
“ Original sources ” but make for us a more 
remote, though a more reliable (when demon¬ 
strated to be genuine) authority. The de¬ 
scriptive studies of the earth and its people, 
whatever special line it may follow, employs 
this same reliance upon authority. 

The subject-matter of the Bible School is, 
confessedly, predominantly of such a nature 
as to require an authoritative treatment, rather 
than an analytic-inductive one. The great 
facts of the religious life are such as to for¬ 
ever baffle the attempt of the human mind to 


42 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

establish them by means of “ scientific ” (the 
method of the natural science) demonstration, 
as if that were the only kind of demonstration, 
and a kind infallible and absolutely reliable. 
The facts of revelation must be presented and 
received authoritatively. One cannot arrive 
at the facts involved in the atonement by any 
process known to the natural sciences. In 
darkness men have groped; in darkness we 
would be groping now, had not a light shined 
to dispel that darkness. 

But the facts of the religious life are not 
such as to be entirely a matter of authority, 
capable of no induction, not open to experi¬ 
mental tests, having no room for a free play of 
the minds of those being instructed in affairs 
of the religious life. Nor are the credentials 
whereby these authoritative deliverances are 
accepted as such a matter of authority, of un¬ 
questioned acceptance. They make their ap¬ 
peal in the high court of reason and of the 
reasonable, and thus afford exercise for mental 
functions other than those involved in belief, 
in the acceptance of things delivered authorita¬ 
tively. And, surely, in the complex affairs of 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 


43 


life, to all of which religion is applicable, and 
in all of which either religion or irreligion 
inheres, there is a legitimate field for the play 
of the activities of observation, analysis, and 
induction. 

The subject-matter of the Bible School is 
predominantly authoritative; but there is 
much, very much, room for teaching processes 
that are other than authoritative in their 
nature. 

There are thus seen to be resemblances and 
differences between the subject-matter of the 
two institutions. Both have material that can 
be, should be, inductively treated; both have 
material that must be authoritatively treated. 
In the secular school induction predominates, 
or should ; 1 in the Bible School, authority. 
Were the latter to borrow from the former in 

1 It is a fact that much of the material that should be 
studied at first hand, in the analytic-inductive way, is, 
in many of the schools, taught in a very different way; 
that many pupils seldom, if ever, get away from the 
authority of the printed page ; for if the teacher speaks 
authoritatively, it is apt to be but a warming over of text¬ 
book assertions. Happily there is less and less of this as 
the years go by. 


44 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

an indiscriminate, unreflective way, it would 
be in danger, from the point of view of sub¬ 
ject-matter, of borrowing unwisely. 

It is in matters of their distinctive aims, 
much more than in matters of the object dealt 
with and of the nature of the subject-matter 
employed by them, that the differentiation of 
the two institutions becomes most marked. 
We are still concerned with the school as it 
is, from which we feel constrained to borrow. 
Whether we view the aim of the secular 
school as pre-eminently cultural or vocational; 
or whether we think these should intermingle 
equally or in a definite proportion, the charge 
that the secular school of to-day is too in¬ 
tensely intellectual in its aim , is a charge that 
can be easily and successfully defended. We 
by no means lay the fault of this exclusively 
at the door of the school. But the fact, 
wherever the fault belongs, is one that is in 
evidence to those who have eyes to see. The 
emotional and volitional phases of soul-life 
are subordinated to the intellectual. And the 
development of the moral and religious phases 
of soul-life are almost entirely ignored. 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 


45 


By way of substantiating this charge, we 
turn to one of the most remarkable of educa¬ 
tional reports, that issued by Chicago’s Educa¬ 
tional Commission in 1900. The Commission 
had the interests of more than 384,000 chil¬ 
dren under consideration. It consisted of 
twelve men. President Harper was the Com¬ 
mission’s chairman, and George F. James its 
secretary. There were fifty-four advisory 
members, representing eighteen different 
States. Of these advisory members, twenty 
were representatives of the leading universities 
of the country ; eighteen were superintendents 
of city school systems ; four were State super¬ 
intendents ; two high school principals; four 
were State normal school principals, and six 
prominent names belonged to none of these 
classes. The Commission is thus seen to be 
representative—whether we view it from a 
geographical, a university, a city, a state, or a 
normal school point of view. 

And what are the things with which the 
secular school is to concern itself, as this Com¬ 
mission and its many advisors see its function, 
the aim of the public school, to be ? The index 


46 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

shows that attention was given, among other 
things, to buildings, janitors, civics, domestic 
science, commercial training, compulsory at¬ 
tendance, manual training, drawing, German, 
Latin, music, nature study, text-books, train¬ 
ing for citizenship, etc. These are all vital 
things, and with the others treated by the 
Commission, should have the place given them 
in this exceptionally valuable production. 

We will question the index as to the Com¬ 
mission’s definite references to moral nurture. 
Under M we read, “ Manual Training, Mayor, 
Music.” Turning, in seach of the Commis¬ 
sion’s views as to the secular school’s functions 
in religious nurture, to R, we read, “ Resident 
Commissioners: appointment of, duties of,” etc. 

We are not concerned about a criticism of 
this state of affairs. We want to show only 
that u the moral and religious phases of soul- 
life are almost entirely ignored ” by the secu¬ 
lar school, as it exists. 

But just here the Bible School finds its reason 
for being, that it may provide for the nurture 
of the moral and religious phases of soul-life. 

There is thus a discrepancy, not an antagon- 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 47 

ism, however, between the two aims that leads 
us to fear that we may easily go too far in our 
borrowing, in our learning, from the secular 
school. 

We have thus found that from the view¬ 
point of the object dealt with we are entitled 
to look for helpfulness from the secular school. 
But from the viewpoints of the subject-matter 
and the aims of the two institutions we have 
been constrained to materially qualify our 
looking-for-helpfulness conclusion. We may 
answer the inquiry of the caption by saying 
there are some things we may borrow from 
the secular school; there are some things the 
secular school cannot teach us, which must be 
learned in other ways. 

The Bible School, a distinctively religious 
institution, aims to reach the emotional and 
volitional centers, that the Christ may be en¬ 
shrined in the heart and served in the life. 
But there is only one way by means of which 
these may be reached. That way is the way 
of intellectual activity. There is no other 
way. Faith cometh not but by hearing, and 
hearing is an intellectual process. L,ove, in 


48 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

its many and varied forms, comes in the same 
way—contemplation of the object around 
which the emotion centers. There is no dif¬ 
ference, no exception in the working of this 
principle, whether the object loved be a doll, 
a pet, a parent, or God. Nor can there ever 
be a volitional resultant in character without 
the intellectual and emotional stages. 

Here is where the secular school is most 
nearly perfect, in its comprehension of the in¬ 
tellectual activities. Nor does the fact that 
these activities are made to be an end in them¬ 
selves by the secular school detract from its 
comprehension of the activities. Here may 
the Bible School learn. Here has the Bible 
School been too slow to learn in the past. And 
in the borrowing that it is now doing it often 
ignores this source of helpfulness, satisfying 
itself with a copying of features which are 
much less desirable and serviceable than other 
things that may be borrowed. 

The secular school can teach us much about 
the intellectual part of our work. It can tell 
us how interest may be generated and used by 
way of securing a permanency of impression ; 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 49 

how material can be presented so as to be 
most readily comprehended ; how to rightly 
use repetition so as to avoid monotony and 
contribute to fixation of the material taught; 
how to employ the principle of apperception 
in more ways, and in more significant ways, 
than by using a mere approach to a lesson— 
the average approach itself needing to be care¬ 
fully treated in order that it may be apper- 
ceived, and not become a distracting factor; 
how to attend to the physical factor in educa¬ 
tion, so as to make air and movement and 
light and dress and seating all conspire to 
help us in our work; how to employ the con¬ 
crete in our presentation of the lessons. 

In addition to these things, the secular 
school, in the recent child-study movement, 
is growing into a fuller appreciation of child¬ 
hood, a larger sympathy with childhood, a 
more intense regard for the laws of child-life, 
and a willingness to be guided by these laws 
in its treatment of children. Here may the 
Bible School learn. Here should it study 
carefully. Here should it thoroughly learn the 
greatest lesson the secular school can teach it 


4 


50 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

—to study its own problems. For, It may be 
that some of the willingness to adopt secular 
school methods is an evidence of lethargy and 
of indolence, and therefore calls for reproba¬ 
tion rather than for the commendation that 
should be given were the willingness to adopt 
an outgrowth of a different attitude. 

No one can carefully study the tendency 
pointed out by Commissioner Harris without 
detecting the fact that there is possible an adop¬ 
tion of the spirit and an adoption of the letter. 
Some, much, of the adoption is of the let¬ 
ter, is of the things of the surface, the less 
vital and significant things. There is some ex¬ 
cuse for this. Much is made of these things 
by the secular school. They are much in the 
eye of the public, so easily satisfied with the 
surface things, as a rule, till the deeper things 
have been clearly shown them. Gradings, 
examinations, promotions, rewards, etc., hold a 
“ bad eminence ” to-day in the secular school. 
To adopt them in the letter is at best a ques¬ 
tionable procedure for the Bible School. There 
is that in their spirit (save the rewards), how¬ 
ever, that is valuable and worth adopting. 





IV. 

IN DEFENCE OF EARLY RELIGIOUS 
INSTRUCTION. 



IN DEFENCE OF EAREY REEIGIOUS 
INSTRUCTION. 


DOES it seem to be a strange caption ? It 
is none the less a justified one. Both the 
practice of many and the theory of some call 
in question the wisdom of early religious in¬ 
struction. The theoretical calling in question 
takes place in the name of science, and in 
such a way as to give a supposedly scientific 
basis to the indifference of so many homes to 
the matter of a development of the germinal 
religious phase of child-life. 

The starting point from which some call in 
question the wisdom of efforts directed to¬ 
wards the religious nurture of the children 
through instruction is found in the nature of 
the religious ideas children have or get as a 
result of the instruction given them. 

The nature of these ideas may be seen in 
the following examples gathered from the 
literature of child-study and from personal 
knowledge. 


( 53 ) 


54 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

A child’s prayer : 

“ Please, God, Grandpapa has gone to you. 
Take good care of him. Please always 
mind and shut the door, because he can’t 
stand drafts.” 

A prayer to the devil: 

A little child was seen to bury a piece of 
paper in the ground. On examination of 
the paper by a curious adult, it was seen to 
contain the following : “ Dear devil, please 
come and take Aunt. I can’t stand her 
much longer.” 

Men are gods: 

Seeing a group of workmen, a child said : 

“ Mamma, are these gods ? ” 

“Gods? Why?” 

“ Because they make houses and churches, 
same as God makes moons and people and 
ickle dogs.” 

A wrestle with omnipresence : 

A girl who had been taught that God is 
everywhere said, one day : 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 55 

“ Mamma, me don’t see God. I dess He’s 
don to take a walk.” 

God possesses a body : 

A child who had heard the expression 
“ this footstool ” used in a conversation asked 
the man on whose knees she sat at the time 
the meaning of the expression. On being 
told that the earth is often spoken of as 
“ God’s footstool,” she exclaimed : 

“ O-h-h ! what long legs ! ” 

Another child drew a picture of Jesus and 
of God, making God have very long arms. 

Heavenly mail facilities: 

A child whose Grandmother had just died 
asked her mother if God had a street and 
a number. When asked why she wanted to 
know, she replied : 

“ Nothing, only I wanted to write a letter 
to Him to send Grandma back again.” 

A co-worker with God : 

A three-year-old boy was with a woman 
whose home was a second home to him. 


56 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

They were in the flower garden. Seeing a 
crocus in bloom, and remembering that the 
previous fall he had put the bulb into the 
ground (as one of his age so often does 
things, by the help of others), he asked, 
“Did I make that flower grow?” When 
told that God sent the rain and the sunshine 
which made .it grow, he insisted that he had 
had a part in the process, and finally dropped 
the subject by saying : 

“God and I make the flowers grow.” 

There is surely no good ground on which 
to dispute the characterization of these ideas 
which describes them as “vague, grotesque, 
and materialistic.” They evidence very plain¬ 
ly the child’s struggle to adjust his religious 
instruction and the facts of his everyday, sen¬ 
sible, tangible, visible experience. 

Granting that these ideas are the possession 
of all children—for they are in greater or less 
degree, what is the conclusion that must be 
drawn from the fact ? What bearing has the 
fact on the practice of early religious in¬ 
struction ? Here we find discordant answers. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 57 

The discord here found is the justification of 
the caption of the chapter. 

In his work on “ The Development of the 
Child,” in the chapter on “ The Place of Re¬ 
ligion in the Development of the Child,” Dr. 
Nathan Oppenheim draws from the nature of 
children’s religious ideas the following con¬ 
clusion (page 138): 

“ So long as the unripeness of their minds 
and their generally undeveloped state forbid 
the grasping of a full-grown system [italics 
ours], then something else which has more 
of stability and as much of disciplinary 
features should take the unfilled place.” 

The author seems to assume the principle 
that children should not be given anything 
they cannot understand. And in his applica¬ 
tion of this principle to matters of religious 
nurture he is most rigorous. 

But this principle, while it contains an ele¬ 
ment of truth, unquestionably contains much 
of error. It is indeed true that it would be 
very unwise, to say the least, to make the giv¬ 
ing to children of things wholly beyond their 
comprehension the ruling principle in educa- 


58 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

tion, or the basis of curriculum arrangement; 
but to try to give them only such things as 
they can fully comprehend would be an ab¬ 
surdity. The absurdity would be that of 
attempting the impossible. We are not now 
concerned with final statements, such as most 
of the children, when grown to maturity, will 
be unable either to make or to comprehend. It 
is impossible to give to any child at the first 
presentation a notion that it can fully com¬ 
prehend, that will not need to grow, to be 
added to, to be taken from, to be readjusted. 
Every year of life, every deepening of the 
channel of experience will bring contribu¬ 
tions to correct, to enlarge, to qualify, con¬ 
ceptions that have been previously formed. 

It is a mistake to keep from children the 
greater literature because they cannot fully 
comprehend it. Into its significance they will 
grow. Its difficulties will provoke observa¬ 
tion and reflection, will challenge to interpre¬ 
tation. It is likewise a mistake to give them 
nothing but this. The partisans on the two 
sides of this controversy as to children’s liter¬ 
ature may well cease to contend. For, as long 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 59 

as there are places common alike to the litera- 
ature and to the experience of the children, 
one may safely allow the better things, even 
though they be somewhat above the children ; 
but there must be these common places. 

The same holds good in the realm of re¬ 
ligious instruction. There are sufficient places 
of contact with the children’s experience to 
justify the presentation to them of spiritual 
truths. There are considerations that should 
rule in the choice of the material to be given 
to children as a means of nurture, but 110 one 
of these considerations can legitimately be 
made to exclude religious instruction. 

Those who advocate the postponement of 
religious instruction till an age of maturity 
has been reached treat the religious ideas of 
children as if they were abnormal, thus 
ignoring the function of their crudeness, their 
vagueness, their materialism. 

But these ideas are not in any sense abnor¬ 
mal ; they are intensely normal, and of just 
such a nature as we should expect them to be, 
reasoning from what we know of the develop¬ 
ment of the child-mind. Professor Sully says: 


60 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

“The teacher should remember that all 
knowledge proceeds from the vague and in¬ 
definite to the definite and exact; that clear 
ideas are formed by a gradual process of 
development.” 

Another writer has given the following form 
to the same thought, saying: 

“ The acquisition of this knowledge [other 
than that of religious things] comes in a 
slow and fragmentary way. For a long 
while it resembles a sort of patchwork, and 
not until after the lapse of years does it 
become homogeneous.” 

It does not seem credible, but it is true, that 
the author of the latter quotation is none other 
than Dr. Oppenheim himself. Only seventeen 
pages of his book have intervened between 
the sentence we are studying and this assertion. 
There is either an inconsistency here, or the 
laws of the mental life do not hold in the 
realm of religious things. 

Dr. Oppenheim fears that because of the 
crudeness of these early religious ideas, in¬ 
cluding as they do elements that must later be 
eliminated, the child’s faith in the entire sys- 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 61 

tem will be shaken. Needless fear, unless the 
author allows no common ground between 
mental life and the religious life. A little 
boy’s notion of “ dog ” was so vague at first 
that he applied the term to cats, etc., and even 
to his mother. As he matures and recalls this 
crudeness, or reads the record of the observa¬ 
tion, will he have his faith in dogs shaken, 
will he question their existence ? Why, then, 
his faith in religious things ? Will he see in 
these crude notions of former years anything 
other than the way-stones of progress toward 
a more adequate and more nearly correct con¬ 
ception of things of the religious life ? 

So far is the early religious training of chil¬ 
dren from being ruled out by present-day 
studies of child-life, that it has never been 
shown to be so imperative, that its advisability 
has never been so clearly comprehended. 

The psychological law of apperception, the 
law of the mind’s grasping and comprehend¬ 
ing new material through its relation to 
material that has been previously compre¬ 
hended and worked over, pleads forcibly for 
an early training in religion, however crude it 


5 


62 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

may be, as a necessary condition of a later 
training which results in greater clearness. 
For it is only by means of a crude conception 
that we can ever approach more nearly to a 
conception lacking crudity. 

Then, too, the delay in giving instruction 
in religious matters, if it were possible to pre¬ 
vent all religious contact with life on the part 
of the child, may result in an atrophying of 
the power to comprehend things of a religious 
nature. However we may account for the 
fact of atrophy, there seems to be good reason 
to look for it to follow such treatment as is 
suggested for the religious elements in child- 
life. In the character of “ Constance Trescott ” 
Dr. S. Weir Mitchell works out to its bitter con¬ 
sequences this atrophy resulting on a denial to 
a child of the things that have to do with 
religion. In later life and in a time when 
there was need for the influences of religion in 
her life she was of necessity compelled to 
walk alone, dull, dead, to all the proffers of 
religion. 

We have just said, “If it were possible to 
prevent all religious contact on the part of the 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 63 

child.” But this is not possible to-day under 
normal conditions, and because the child will 
come in contact with religious customs and 
observances there is a necessity for instruction 
that he may grow along right lines and not be 
compelled later to undertake a reconstruction 
of character as well as of ways of thinking. 

There is, then, the added fact that a child not 
instructed is in danger of being habituated to 
non-religious, or to irreligious things ; the field 
of his life becoming pre-empted, it becomes 
very difficult, if not impossible, for religious 
things to find admittance. 

“ Let the child wait till he has grown and 
then choose his own religion,” said an English 
statesman in the hearing of Coleridge. Cole¬ 
ridge, leading his friend into the garden, said, 
“ I have decided not to put out any vegetables 
this spring, but to wait till August and let the 
garden decide for itself whether it prefers 
weeds or strawberries.” This is the logic of 
the delayed instruction theory. 

It is true that Dr. Oppenheim proposes to 
have morality grow during this period in 
which there is to be no religious instruction. 


64 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

But no growth of morality can satisfy the ob¬ 
jections made against his contention. 

This theory of delaying religious instruction 
is not a theory that has arisen with Dr. Oppen- 
heim’s book, in 1898. It was long ago valiantly 
championed by that most enigmatical, most 
paradoxical (in life as in his writings) French¬ 
man, Jean Jacques Rousseau. “ Emile,” about 
whose education he theorized so splendidly, 
was to be denied religious instruction till he 
should reach the age of from sixteen to 
eighteen years. 

A peculiarity about Rousseau’s “ Emile ” is 
that it had the power of inspiring others to 
educational effort. From it, the only work on 
education Pestalozzi ever read, the great Swiss 
educator drew much of inspiration. The book 
inspired a German father to test the theory of 
religious instruction it advocated. Compayre, 
in his “History of Pedagogy,” quotes Ville- 
main with reference to this experiment, as 
follows: 

“ One might have read, a few years ago, 
the account, or rather, the psychological con¬ 
fession of a writer (Sentenis), a German 


Studies i?i Religious Nurture . 65 

philosopher whom his father had submitted 
to the experiment advised by the author of 
‘Emile.’ L,eft alone by the. death of a 
tenderly loved wife, this father, a learned 
and thoughtful man, had taken his infant 
son to a retired place in the country; and 
not allowing him communication with any¬ 
one, he had cultivated the child’s intelli¬ 
gence through the sight of natural objects 
placed near him, and by the beauty of 
language, almost without books, and in 
carefully concealing from him all idea of 
God. The child had reached his tenth year 
without having either read or heard that 
great name. But then his mind formed 
what had been denied it. The sun which 
he saw rise each morning seemed the all- 
powerful benefactor of whom he felt the 
need. He soon formed the habit of going 
at dawn to the garden to pay homage to 
that god that he himself had made. His 
father surprised him one day, and showed 
him his error by teaching him that all 
fixed stars are so many suns distributed in 
space. But such was the keen disappoint- 


66 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

ment and the grief of the child deprived of 
his worship, that the father, overcome, 
acknowledged to him that there is a 
God, the Creator of the heavens and the 
earth.” 

Thus there appears a second danger. If 
the child should not lose the power of forming 
religious conceptions, his life becoming pre¬ 
empted with the “ ir- ” or the “ non ’’-religious, 
he may create for himself notions of beings 
answering to fundamental needs of his nature 
for some one, aside from mankind, to fear and 
love and rely upon. M. Compayre asks, 
“Will the child, with his instinctive curiosity, 
wait till his eighteenth year to inquire the 
cause of the universe? Will he not form the 
notion of a god in his own way?” From 
Professor Sully we have what is a virtual 
answer to this question, though not offered as 
such. He gives the facts of the self-evolved 
religious systems, liturgies, etc., of George 
Sand and of Goethe. These clearly show 
that the tendency is a characteristic of child- 
life. In one place Professor Sully says: 

“ Children seem disposed, apart from re- 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 67 

ligious instruction, to form ideas of super¬ 
natural beings.” 

In another place he says: 

“ The liveliness of their imagination and 
their impulse of dread and of trust push 
them to a spontaneous creation of invisible 
beings.” 

Others have seen this same tendency. Profes¬ 
sor Ladd says : 

“The child ... is naturally and nor¬ 
mally, in manifold and subtle ways, not 
only capable of being religious, but bound 
to be religious.” 

Professor Earl Barnes says : 

“ I believe a child has need for a theology, 
and that if he is not given one he will create 
it. He early comes to a point where he seeks 
ultimate origins and ends.” 

It is interesting to note, in passing, the voice 
of a strange antagonist to the Rousseau theory 
and practice. We would expect from agnos¬ 
tics a most hearty concession of the neglect of 
religious instruction of the young. But, on 
turning to an article entitled, “ The Religious 
Training of Children by Agnostics,” written 


68 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

by Ella Darwin, and published in the Inter¬ 
national Journal of Ethics, we find this state¬ 
ment : 

“ He may cause them (offspring) to suffer, 
as it were, a spiritual blight by cutting them 
off from the spiritual life and traditions of 
mankind.” 

Luther was a pedagogue of much keener 
intuitions than either Rousseau or Oppen- 
heim. To him these crude ideas of spiritual 
realities which we find children possessed of 
were not abnormal things to be prevented. 
He did not draw from their existence the in¬ 
ference that a child should not be instructed 
in matters of this kind till maturity had come. 
By no means. These ideas were normal, and 
shared the characteristics of all ideas. Out of 
these and by means of these, crude and mate¬ 
rialistic though they were, the clearer ideas of 
later years were to come. His deduction from 
the fact of these ideas was that the teaching 
of religious things to children should, in a 
measure, be done in terms of such crude ideas, 
on the plane of the experience of the child. 
It is because of his clear recognition of the 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 69 

function of these ideas that he wrote to his 
little son, Hans, a letter that has been charac¬ 
terized as “ A model bit of theological teach¬ 
ing for a young child.” The letter follows : 

“ Grace and peace in Christ, my dear little 
boy. I am pleased to see that thou learnest 
thy lessons well, and prayest well. Go on 
thus, my dear boy, and when I come home 
I will bring you a fine fairing. I know of 
a pretty garden where are merry children 
that have gold frocks, and gather nice apples 
and plums and cherries under the trees, and 
sing and dance, and ride on nice horses 
with gold bridles and silver saddles. I 
asked the man of the place whose the gar¬ 
den was, and who the children were. He 
said : ‘ These are the children who pray and 
learn and are good.’ Then I answered, ‘ I 
also have a son who is called Hans Luther. 
May he come to this garden and eat pears 
and apples and ride a little horse and play 
with the others?* The man said, ‘If he 
says his prayers and learns and is good he 
may come ; and Lippus and Jost may come, 
and they shall have pipes and drums and 


70 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

lutes and fiddles, and they shall dance and 
shoot with little cross-bows.’ Then he 
showed me a smooth lawn in the garden 
laid out for dancing, and there the pipes 
and drums and cross-bows hung. But it 
was still early and the children had not yet 
dined ; and I could not wait for the dance. 
So I said, ‘ Dear sir, I will go straight home 
and write all this to my little boy ; but he 
has an Aunt Lena that he must bring with 
him.’ And the man answered, ‘ So it shall 
be. Go and write as you say.’ Therefore, 
dear little boy, learn and pray with a good 
heart, and tell Lippus and Jost to do the 
same, that you will all come to the garden 
together. Almighty God guard you. Your 
loving father, Martin Luther.” 1 
What is this but a translation into terms of 
the child’s experience and interests of the 
teachings of heaven, as given to us in terms 
of adult experience and interests of long ago ? 
This and that are but feeble efforts to convey 
the blessedness of the house where the many 
mansions are; this and that are but letters 
1 Quoted from Barnes’ “Studies in Education,” 1902. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 71 

with which we spell out the fact of God’s love 
and of the provision which that love has made 
for all those who will meet the conditions of 
the full enjoyment of that love and its pro¬ 
visions: only the alphabets used differ; the 
facts spelled out are identical. By means 
of the two experience alphabets we learn to 
read the spiritual message for us. For nat¬ 
urally the child comes to spiritualize the truths 
that were once held in a materialistic sense. 

The same need for a translation of spiritual 
things into terms of life-experience has been 
encountered by those who have worked with 
the child-races. It is related of the Jesuit 
fathers that, to overcome the savage’s fear of 
starvation in heaven, it became necessary to 
give the assurance that heaven’s stock of game 
was unlimited. And was there any reason 
why the same fathers, when they were com¬ 
pelled to wrestle with the theological question 
of heaven’s tobacco supply, should not in¬ 
corporate the tobacco patch into the descrip¬ 
tion of the paradise—the “hunting ground” 
of the religion they taught? Game, tobacco, 
gold, palms, harps, walls of precious stones, 


72 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 


etc.—these are but alphabet material whereby 
the message becomes in part intelligible. 

What, then, shall our conclusion be ? Shall 
we conclude with Rousseau to postpone re¬ 
ligious instruction till adolescence has well 
come on ? Or shall we believe with Kant that 
“ it is better, then, at an early hour to teach a 
child true religious notions ” ? Shall we not 
accept the advice of an ancient writer who 
believed in training up a child, and, accepting 
this advice, give ourselves to the task with 
the full assurance that revelation and science 
alike enjoin upon us the duty of teaching 
children the facts of the religious life ? 


V. 

A STUDY OF A CRITICISM OF THE 
BIBLE SCHOOL. 




A STUDY OF A CRITICISM OF THE 
BIBLE SCHOOL. 


The mere fact that an institution has been 
criticised ought not to cause immediate re¬ 
sentment and antagonism on the part of the 
institution’s friends. These attitudes unfit 
one for a judicial sifting of presented facts 
and deduced conclusions, often carrying their 
possessor well into the realm of error. At 
other times they blind him to present error 
and thus make impossible an improvement 
sincerely wished for. 

The one who criticises adversely is not by 
that fact marked as an antagonist bent on the 
destruction of the institution criticised. He 
may, indeed, be applying a painful remedy 
that the imperfect institution may be made 
more perfect; but in doing so he may show 
himself a friend. 

Confessedly it is not easy to keep ourselves 
open to criticisms that are adverse. But, like 
many other duties which impel us, this is 

(75) 


7 6 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

none the less our duty because it is difficult of 
achievement. We may need to listen for the 
sternness in the voice of duty, that we may 
yield obedience in this matter, and obeying, 
bring frank and unprejudiced minds to a con¬ 
sideration of a recently made criticism of the 
Bible school. 

There are many who quote approvingly the 
well-known 

“ What’s in a name ? That which we call a rose 
By any other name would smell as sweet,” 

and who, having quoted the words, attempt to 
win sanction and acceptance for them by 
naming Shakespeare as their author. But 
does not the very reference of the quotation to 
Shakespeare suggest the fact that, Juliet to 
the contrary, there is or may be much in a 
name? May a name not stand for a depth 
and breadth and richness of experience, for a 
culture and development, for a patient and 
thorough specialization, for a cogency of in¬ 
tellectual powers, and an integrity of moral 
nature that conspire to qualify one to speak 
upon some particular subject with peculiar 
authority; to make the thought of one man 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 77 

more trustworthy for guidance than that of 
another ? 

There is enough in the name of the author 
of the criticism we are to study to justify us 
in giving our attention to the criticism, at¬ 
tending dispassionately, and in expectation of 
some return for our attention ; but there is 
not enough in this name to justify us in an 
unquestioning acceptance of what the author 
may be pleased to say. 

The context-setting of the criticism is most 
interesting to anyone who is at all concerned 
about or with the problem of religious nurture. 
The author is antagonizing the secularization 
of the “ day ” school, a process that has made 
so much headway in many sections of the 
country, and which contains in itself, as the 
author thinks, elements that must make for 
national weakness and ultimate disintegra¬ 
tion : a nation’s strength and perpetuity being 
directly proportional to the moral vigor and 
firmness of the individual citizens ; the develop¬ 
ment of this moral vigor and oak-like strength 
being impossible when completely dissociated 
from all religious instruction. 


78 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

The author is anxious to demonstrate that 
there is a need ot religious instruction in the 
day school. One line of demonstration assumes 
as proven the vital function of religion in all 
ethical instruction that aims at character 
transformation or formation. This having 
been disposed of, the need of religious in¬ 
struction in the day school is made apparent 
by means of the to-be-studied criticism of the 
Bible school. If the Bible school does not 
give religious instruction, or if it gives it in 
such a way as to court and win failure for its 
efforts, then is there a need for some other in¬ 
stitution ; and the day school, already existent, 
is the institution chosen. In this line of 
demonstration, it will be noted,, the more de¬ 
fective the work of the Bible school is found 
to be, the stronger is the argument against 
the secularized “ day school.” 

But because of this very fact there exists a 
danger of overestimating the Bible school’s 
defects, or of overstating rightly estimated 
defects. Not that this would result from a 
yielding to a conscious temptation; but that 
it might result under the sway of a tendency 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 79 

not consciously operative. For in just this 
way men are swayed. The presence of an 
interest to be served makes very difficult the 
rendering of a judgment that is uncolored, 
unprejudiced, unmixed with personal prefer¬ 
ence or dislike, unswayed by a to-be-proven 
theory. All men need to guard against this 
tendency and to subject themselves to con¬ 
scious check-tests that they may keep them¬ 
selves as free from it as is possible. 

Interesting as the context setting of the 
criticism is, there is that about it which ad¬ 
monishes us of the wisdom of having near at 
hand a “ salt-shaker,” as we pass to a study of 
a criticism of the Bible School. 


80 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

THE CRITICISM. 

“ Only a fraction of our children attend the 
Sunday-schools, and those who do are very 
badly taught. It is true that there are some 
marked exceptions, but on the whole it would 
be fair to say that the teaching done in the 
Sunday-schools is on the plane of the teaching 
done in secular schools seventy-five years ago. 
The children meet in one large room, in the 
midst of endless confusion and distraction— 
for a parallel we should have to go to one of 
the old monitorial schools of England or to 
the Mohammedan University in Cairo. The 
little ones wear their unaccustomed finery, 
their new hats and sashes, gloves and parasols. 
Imagine teaching arithmetic to children so 
arrayed. At least nine-tenths, generally all of 
the teachers, are absolutely untrained ; they 
are almost universally good and kind and re¬ 
spectable, but they have never considered the 
way in which the child’s mind works, and 
they are as unfitted for teaching as were the 
people who kept the dame schools of half a 
century ago. When we come to curriculum 
and method the matter is even worse ; there is 
little or no grading; at most, in nine Sunday- 
schools out of ten, we have the primary class, 
the Sunday-school proper, and the Bible class 
for adults. Imagine a day school where all 
the children were taught the same thing over 
and over for ten years.”—(“ Children’s Attitude 
Toward Theology,” in Barnes’ “Studies in 
Education, 1902,” page 285.) 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 81 

Let us note the several things that are said 
in this criticism. 

“ Only a fraction of our children attend 
our Sunday-schools.’’ 

This is not stated as a fault of the Bible 
School. But the assertion challenges thought. 
Not that it raises any question as to its truth¬ 
fulness. That cannot be called in question 
by anyone conversant with the facts. But it 
leads those of us who are interested in the 
Bible School to question ourselves as to the 
possibility of placing the fault at the doors of 
workers in the Bible School—at our own doors. 
Can it be that those who do not attend have 
tried the institution and rejected it for some 
definite reason ? Can it be that the institu¬ 
tion is not so organized as to come into in¬ 
viting contact with those who should be under 
its influence; that it has failed to appreciate 
the go-into-the-highways-and-compel-them-to- 
come command of the Master? Or is there 
some other explanation, some agency or influ¬ 
ence that relieves the Bible School of all 
culpability ? If so, what should be our atti- 
6 


82 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

tude to this other agency or influence? If 
not, what shall be our attitude toward this 
fact of the small proportion of persons who 
are enrolled as members of the Bible School ? 

This asserted and existent fact is a lament¬ 
able one; for, even if the “ day ” school 
should do all Professor Barnes wants it to do, 
it would not adequately provide for the spirit¬ 
ual needs of children, and most of these young 
people not enrolled in Bible Schools have no 
religious nurture. 

“ Those who do [attend] are very badly 
taught.” 

By its strength this assertion begets a meas¬ 
ure of antagonism that may easily prejudice 
the criticism to us. The strength of the 
assertion is seen in the use of “ those who,” 
an expression equivalent to “ all ” ; in the use 
of the adverb of degree, “ very,” with which 
the author has been pleased to qualify “ badly ” 
—a strong word in itself. As if conscious of 
exaggeration in this statement, the author tells 
us, “ there may be some marked exceptions.” 
There is an underlying assumption con- 



Studies hi Religious Nurture, 83 

nected with this “very badly taught” part of 
the criticism that should be pointed out. 
Failure to notice it is fraught with possibili¬ 
ties of discouragement to Bible School workers, 
as well as with possibilities of failure to help 
the children in the fullest possible measure. 
It is assumed in this criticism (and the as¬ 
sumption is not confined to this criticism by 
any means), that the work of the Bible School 
fails when it fails to teach well; that the test 
of efficient Bible School work is a matter 
of the way it teaches, and nothing more; that 
the potency of the Bible School is to be found 
entirely in the teaching process. Along with 
this assumption we must carry a restricted 
definition of teaching, making it a matter of 
giving instruction, of imparting information. 
But this assumption is wholly unwarranted. 
The teaching function of the Bible School, 
even when narrowly conceived, is vital; but 
it is not exclusively so. It is one factor. 
There are other factors, not-to-be-ignored 
factors, in the work of this institution for the 
nurture of the religious nature. 

Yet there is a tendency to ignore these other 


84 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

factors that is to be found in much of the 
theorizing and of the practice of the Bible 
School to-day. It is very easy to become so 
engrossed in one line of interest that there is 
little room for another. In our aping of the 
day school it is easy for us to overlook the 
special function of the Holy Spirit which 
serves as one mark of differentiation between 
the two institutions. It is a hard-to-prove 
proposition that a very skillful teacher, peda- 
gogically considered, who undertakes the work 
of the Bible School with no reliance on, no 
petition to, the Holy Spirit, will do more effect¬ 
ive work, so far as the real mission of the Bible 
School is concerned, than will be done by a 
pedagogically poorly-equipped-to-teach teacher 
who, conscious of imperfection and burning 
with a passion for souls, pleads for the Spirit’s 
help. This is in no way a denial of the ideal 
condition which calls for both good teaching 
and firm reliance on the Holy Spirit. 

Another ignored factor calls for attention 
later. 


The teaching done in Sunday-schools 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 85 

is on the plane of the teaching done in 
secular schools seventy-five years ago.” 

A careful and unprejudiced study of the 
practices of the two institutions compared in 
this assertion will demonstrate that the asser¬ 
tion is too strong, much too strong. Such 
study will show, we have reason to believe, 
that, comparing the two institutions as they 
exist to-day, worst with worst, average with 
average, best with best, the Bible School does 
not suffer much in the comparison. One is 
led to think that the author of the criticism 
has not used this method of comparison. He 
must have had in mind good secular schools 
and very poor Bible Schools. By such a 
method one might justify some of the con¬ 
clusions of this criticism. By way of defend¬ 
ing his assertion of the antiquatedness of the 
Bible School, the author adds: 

“ The children meet in one large room, 
in the midst of endless confusion and dis¬ 
traction. For a parallel we would have to 
go to one of the old monitorial schools of 
England or to the Mohammedan University 
at Cairo.” 


86 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

But for all the classes of a Bible School to 
meet in one room is, to-day, the exception. 
Nearly all schools have at least two rooms, 
and most schools have several. The ideal is 
to isolate during the teaching period as many 
classes as possible. That there is distraction 
from the presence of a number of classes in 
the same room is true, but that this distraction 
is not so pronounced as might be expected 
is the verdict of the experience of many who 
have taught under these conditions. 

But this condition is not distinctive of the 
Bible School to-day. Some day schools resort 
to it under the compulsion of necessity. We 
have known classes of fifty side by side in one 
room, separated by nothing but a curtain, to 
be compelled to work under these conditions 
for five hours in the schools of New York 
City, not so remote in time as the monitorial 
schools, nor in space as Cairo. Nor is this an 
accusation of the schools thus compelled to do 
some of their work. Nor does it reflect any¬ 
thing but credit on the Bible Schools that they, 
when so compelled, will undertake to do their 
work under difficulties. The very willingness 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 


and consecration to a purpose represented in 
their working under these conditions become 
in a measure counteractors to the defects in 
conditions under which the work is done. 

“ The little ones wear their unaccustomed 
finery, their new hats and sashes, gloves and 
parasols (!). Imagine teaching arithmetic 
to children so arrayed.” 

Aside from the amusement that this will 
afford primary teachers in Bible Schools, the 
author raises the question of church or Sunday 
clothes. That they may become distracting 
factors to the wearer through discomfort or a 
desire to leave an impression of one’s person¬ 
ality on those who may see, is quite beyond 
dispute. But that such distraction must neces¬ 
sarily and always result from the wearing of 
“ Sunday ” clothes by no means follows. Dis¬ 
traction and discomfort aside, there is a value 
to being well dressed that becomes an ally to 
those seeking to helpfully and positively touch 
young lives. Mrs. Bishop, in the Chautauqua 
Herald of some years ago, writes: 

“ It may never have occurred to some of 


88 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

you, tliat dress has any reactionary influence 
upon the inner states, but so potent is this 
influence that frequently we can change the 
mental states by a change of dress. When 
tired, gloomy or fretful, a change in apparel 
often means a change in mood. . . . Many 
actors say that to be dressed for the part is 
a great help toward feeling the part. . . . 
An army general once declared that he could 
not fight without his uniform, that an ordi¬ 
nary hat and coat took all the courage out 
of him.” 

The potency of dress is asserted by Elizabeth 
Stuart Phelps in the following epigram : 

“The consciousness of clean linen is of 
itself a source of moral strength only second 
to that of a clean conscience.” 

The latter statement gives us guidance in 
determining what is meant by being ethically 
“well dressed.” It is not a matter of the 
latest fashion ; it is not a matter of the expen¬ 
siveness of the material, of the exclusiveness 
of the pattern, of the “ striking ” effect upon 
others. These things, when a matter of con¬ 
scious concern, cannot helpfully minister to 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 89 

one’s reverence and preparedness for the re¬ 
ception of spiritual and ethical truth. Being 
ethically well dressed is not a matter of 
wealth : it is as possible to the poor as to the 
rich. 

It is not asserted that the ethically helpful 
consciousness of clean clothes must be ob¬ 
trusive, so that children and adults must be 
clearly aware of the value attaching to them. 
Their value exists and is operative, whether 
it is distinctly recognized or not. But it 
seems to be unwarranted to assert that to 
make the appropriateness of clothes to an 
occasion a matter of consciousness will not add 
to the potency of the clothes in generating a 
mental attitude suitable to the occasion. 

If it be true, as has been asserted, that chil¬ 
dren are not normally conscious of their 
clothes, 1 that any such consciousness results 
from remarks made to them by their elders, 
then is it possible for the homes, by their 
comments and remarks, to make the clothes- 
consciousness positive and helpful, free from 
objectionable features, an ally to the earnest 
1 Dr. Iy. W. Flaccus, in Pedagogical Seminary, 1906. 


90 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

efforts of the workers in the Bible School as 
they try to secure for the truths taught a 
favorable reception. 

But nothing that is here said can be con¬ 
strued as an argument in favor of children 
wearing their hats and coats and “parasols” 
during the hour of the Bible School’s session ; 
as an argument in favor of ignoring the com¬ 
fort of the children in dressing them for the 
Bible School or the church service. Discom¬ 
fort is distraction, of necessity, and is to be 
avoided. 

“ At least nine-tenths, generally all, of the 

teachers are absolutely untrained.” 

That trained teachers are desirable for the 
work of the Bible School is a proposition we 
will all accept most heartily and prayerfully, 
as we feel the need of them. But that the 
case is as bad as this statement makes it ap¬ 
pear is not probable. It seems to be true that 
a careful examination of the enrolled workers 
in the Bible School will reveal the fact that 
the fraction mentioned is too large, and that 
the adverb of degree used is too strong. Or 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 91 

if this be denied, it may then be asserted that 
the author’s conception of training is too 
narrow. 

This assertion of the narrowness of the con¬ 
ception of training that lies back of this part 
of the criticism may be based on the fact that 
there is a difference between being familiar 
with the knowledge of a “secular” branch 
and being familiar with God’s word. One 
may know the former, and for this knowledge 
be none the better fitted for the teaching of 
the branch. But this is scarcely possible with 
one who knows the Bible. In the very process 
of learning the things he knows he has been 
in contact with the very best teaching the 
world has ever seen. As they were taught 
originally, they were taught, most of them, by 
masters of teaching. The truths and the 
teaching of them are not dissociated. One 
gets the method of the teaching at the same 
time that he is getting the things taught. 
This may often take place unconsciously, but 
none the less surely for that. It is because of 
this fact that we question the “ absolutely un¬ 
trained ” characteristics of so large a propor- 


92 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

tion of Bible School workers as the author 
asserts. 

In addition to the size of the fraction, the 
strength of the adverb and the narrowness of 
the conception of training, it may be said that 
this statement under consideration gives a far 
too prominent place to technical training, to 
professional equipment, desirable as this is, 
and significant as it may be made to be in the 
work of the Bible School. It, in itself, does 
not suffice. It is a case of “other things 
being equal,” choose the trained teacher. 

“ They are almost universally good and 
kind and respectable, but they have never 
considered the way in which the child’s 
mind works, and they are as unfitted for 
teaching as were the people who kept the 
dame schools of half a century ago.” 

Let us notice in inverse order the contents 
of this statement. The antiquatedness of the 
Bible School is here measured by fifty, instead 
of by seventy-five, as it was a few lines above. 

In so far as one is ignorant of the ways of 
working of the child-mind, and possesses no 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 


93 


compensating features, that one is unfitted for 
teaching in any kind of school. We have 
seen that it is possible for this ignorance to be 
in a measure atoned for; that much of this 
knowledge may be gotten indirectly and uncon¬ 
sciously. It is not necessary that a law be 
consciously employed to derive from it its 
benefits. There are reasons for consciously 
using it in education. But if it is used, 
whether consciously or otherwise, it will work 
out its life effects. Nor is the mere possession 
of a knowledge of these things a sure guar¬ 
antee that they will be used. Many a teacher 
knows how to teach better than he teaches. 
Better have a law obeyed in ignorance of its 
existence than to know of its existence and 
make no use of its potency. But the ideal is, 
of course, that the law be both known and 
used. 

In the remaining part of this sentence we 
have a concession that, carried to its legitimate 
implications, will go far to atone for other 
defects in the teaching force of institutions 
wishing to helpfully touch life, rather than to 
merely inform the mind. Whittier’s 


94 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

‘ ‘ By his life alone, 

Gracious and sweet, the better way was shown,” 

asserts the possibility of teaching by life, by 
conduct, by character. A number of recent 
pedagogical studies conspire to lay increasing 
emphasis upon the potency of teaching of this 
kind. And from the remote past we hear the 
same thing emphasized in— 

“ The road by precepts is tedious, by ex¬ 
ample short and straight.”— Seneca. 

The one unforgivable pedagogical blunder 
on the part of the Bible School is committed 
in allowing persons of immoral or questionable 
character to be enrolled among its teachers. 
It matters not what their professional or techni¬ 
cal qualification may be, it cannot atone for 
this deficiency. But, on the other hand, 
strength of character, pure life, loyalty in the 
service of the Christ will go far, very far, 
toward compensating for professional defi¬ 
ciency. So far will it go towards such com¬ 
pensation that many who realize the value of 
professional equipment would have no hesi¬ 
tancy whatever in choosing a teacher whose 
character in reasonable degree measures up to 



Studies in Religious Nurture . 95 

the standards of the Christ, though he had 
never heard of “ normal training,” as against 
one who had a splendid professional training, 
but whose life gave no proof of the indwelling 
of the Christ, no evidence of earnest, honest 
effort to shape the life after the standards of 
the cross. For even such effort on the part of 
a teacher does not fail to leave a helpful im¬ 
press upon the lives of those being taught by 
the one making the effort. The following 
quotation from Professor Edward Howard 
Griggs asserts what may justly be character¬ 
ized as the most profound fact of all pedagogy ; 
a fact entirely ignored by the criticism under 
consideration ; a fact that will abundantly repay 
any meditation a parent or a teacher, whether 
of “ day ” school or of Bible School, may give 
to it: 

(; We teach not only by what we do, but 
by what we try to do even when we fail. It 
is possible, fortunately, to teach lessons 
above the level of what we are in conduct, 
though not higher than what we want to be 
and strive to be. The ideal we are strug¬ 
gling towards teaches above our halting and 


96 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

struggling action. Thus children tend to 
imitate not only our conduct, but, deeper 
than it, the spirit that inspires our conduct. 

. . . Thus, even though we may not dare 
to hope that our lives may be able to influ¬ 
ence others through the c contagion of a great 
soul ’ that is so supreme in education, still, 
in our sphere in home and in school, if we 
are devoted servants of ideals that lift away 
from the plane of merely selfish life, we may 
hope that, even in failure, some radiance of 
the ideal will flow from our spirit and touch 
the children we love into sane, sweet, earnest 
moral life.’’ 

One who accepts the doctrine of the essen¬ 
tial sameness of mental functions in the differ¬ 
ent realms of mental activity will have no 
trouble in accepting this principle, here so 
forcefully expressed by Professor Griggs, and 
in applying it as a principle in religious nur¬ 
ture. It holds in the religious as in the moral 
realm; they are not separate and distinct 
realms. If they were, in both would the prin¬ 
ciple operate. 

“ When we come to the curriculum and 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 


97 


method the matter is even worse; there is 
little or no grading ; at most, in nine Sunday- 
schools out of ten, we have the primary 
class, the Sunday-school proper, and the 
Bible class for adults. Imagine a day school 
where all the children were taught the same 
thing over and over for ten years.” 

That the problem of a proper adjustment of 
the material of the curriculum to the needs of 
the pupils of different stages of development 
is one not yet solved by the Bible School; and 
that, in the absence of a solution to this prob¬ 
lem, curriculum errors are made is conceded 
most willingly. But splendid efforts have been 
made to solve the problem, and at the time of 
the writing of the criticism there existed cur¬ 
ricula that at least were sufficiently meritorious 
to have justified one who knew of them to 
make an exception in their favor. Since then 
still further progress has been made. The In¬ 
ternational Committee on Lessons now frankly 
recognizes the fundamental principle of differ¬ 
ent material for the different development 
stages, as over against the formerly dominant 
and erroneous conception of different treatment 


7 


98 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

of the same material for the different grades 
of the school. 

To say that “ all the children were taught 
the same thing ” is to speak in the light of the 
facts of Bible School procedure of a few years 
ago, with here and there an exception; but to 
add that they were taught this same thing 
“ over and over for ten years ” is to speak after 
one has exhausted his knowledge of the facts, 
and is too busy to take time to inquire for 
them. This condition of affairs was never 
characteristic of Bible School work, even when 
it concerned itself with teaching the art of 
spelling by the aid of illustrations: when 
h-a-t spelled “ c stove-pipe \ -hat,” and e-g-g, 
“ Easter egg.” 

Were this criticism toned down consider¬ 
ably, diluted with a larger percentage of fair¬ 
ness, weakened by taking from it what appear 
to be the effects of a desire to paint a dark 
background upon which a contention could 
be thrown into strong relief, it would afford 
food for thought to Bible School workers in¬ 
tent on improving their work. 


VI. 


WHY THE WEAKNESS? 

tore. 



WHY THE WEAKNESS? 1 


The sub-divisions of our general theme re¬ 
mind one of three men, who for some reason 
or other have lost the power of muscular co¬ 
ordination, trying to walk abreast without in 
any way inconveniencing one another. Theirs 
is a difficult task under the conditions speci¬ 
fied. So is ours as we attempt to consider 
this theme under these three captions without 
bumping into one another, without encroach¬ 
ing upon one another’s territory. How wel¬ 
come a spite fence would be ! 

Fortunately, we are able to give you an ab¬ 
solute, an exhaustive, though brief, answer to 
the question set for our stumbling. You need 

1 From program of the Pennsylvania State Sabbath 
School Association, in session in Philadelphia, October, 
1905. Thursday afternoon, October 12th. “The Inter¬ 
mediate Department—Our Weak Spot.” {a) Pupils from 
twelve to sixteen years, Rev. Forest E. Dager, Philadel¬ 
phia, Pa. (£) Why the Weakness? Rev. A. B. Van 
Ormer, Norwood, Pa. ( c ) How to Strengthen. Marion 
Lawrance, Toledo, Ohio. 


102 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

not question the validity of the answer, you 
may rely upon it. And it gives one a peculiar 
pleasure to thus offer to Bible School workers 
something that is final, that is absolutely 
reliable. 

Why the weakness ? I do not know. 

Furthermore, in this absolute way of an¬ 
swering a most vital question, I do not know 
of any one who does know. This is not the 
same as saying there is no one who does know. 
Of that one cannot be so sure. Some one may 
know all about it, the cause and the working 
out of that cause into the effect we are de¬ 
ploring. Then, too, there may be some who 
think they know. 

But in this “ thinking we know ” is to be 
found an element of danger in our Bible School 
work; especially so, now, as we stand at a 
constructive stage of our work, ready to build 
anew, or to remodel the former structure, as 
we may be advised to do. “ Thinking we 
know ” and “ cock-sureness ” are near akin. 
The latter may be described as a compound 
made up of a little experience inadequately 
reflected upon and unintelligently questioned ; 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 


103 


a wishing that things might be and the in¬ 
ference on this basis that they can be and 
should be; a brooding upon some theory that 
has flashed into the mind with all the peculiar 
charm attaching to theories that are “ all our 
own ” ; a complacency with things as they are 
that resents any suggested innovation—these 
elements may enter into the compound in dif¬ 
ferent proportions. But the compound, what¬ 
ever the proportion of its elements, is at best 
very unreliable. There is great danger in 
being too sure; there always is. 

In view of the absence of definite, specific, 
broadly foundationed and adequately verified 
teachings as to the weakness, the duty of the 
Bible School seems to be a plain one. It 
should study the problem. It is true that 
much indifference as to such things, as to 
efforts to discover truth bearing directly on 
the work of the Bible School is to be found on 
the part of the Bible School workers. But it is 
now possible to find much interest in the re¬ 
sults of such work, and even in the carrying 
on of the work. Many have been willing to 
give sufficient of their time to enable them to 


104 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

co-operate with efforts seeking to more ade¬ 
quately comprehend the problem of religious 
nurture. 

It would seem to be a legitimate corollary 
that in the study of the problem before us the 
Bible School should be our laboratory, rather 
than the laboratory for psychological research 
—much as we owe to the latter. Our problem 
ought to be attacked at first hand by persons 
willing and able to carry on investigations. 

Nor should our investigators be entirely 
without a brief. The boast of science is the 
absence of the brief. But one cannot read 
carefully between the lines of many a recent 
scientific production on lines akin to our own, 
without getting the impression that the action 
belies the profession. The brief can be seen, 
and it is often for unbelief. The intense sci¬ 
entific zeal for truth is often commingled with 
a personal equation of unbelief that makes 
thoroughly untrustworthy conclusions issued 
as truth. The mere desire to be “ scientific ” 
seems at times to be discoverable as a warping 
influence in some of the studies and con¬ 
clusions that have to do with our work. 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 105 

We would have our investigators previously 
committed to the great facts of a possibility 
of and a necessity for religious nurture ; would 
have them regard this as a supreme duty of 
adulthood to immature life ; would have them 
spend their energies in seeking to find how we 
can best achieve this nurture—how follow the 
line of least resistance and avoid detrimental 
effects from our attempts at helpfulness. 

But, speaking conjecturally, there are some 
things to be said in answer to our question. 

We do not find the weakness explained by 
the fact of the imperfection of our system of 
artificial appeals and stimulation. We some¬ 
times act as if the trouble were here. We in¬ 
vent, advertise, and, alas! use various devices 
whereby an artificial stimulation entirely 
dissociated from any of the real work of the 
Bible School is secured. We have prizes, ban¬ 
ners, rewards, diplomas, seals, and episeals, 
to the nauseation of those who have any com¬ 
prehension of the vital function of our work. 

These very things, it is conceivable, may 
result ultimately in disgust with the system 
that relies upon them or extensively employs 


106 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

them in its efforts to hold young people in the 
Bible School and the Church. Should such 
disgust arise in any young soul, it is an evi¬ 
dence of a healthy condition, and one that 
makes lasting influence possible. Too long 
have we been thinking too much of these 
things, and been thinking too little of the 
vital things in our work We have been com¬ 
missioned to distribute bread and not stones; 
to generate altruism, rather than to studiously 
develop egoism, though the latter is the easier 
procedure. 

Let us not, then, seek the cause of the weak¬ 
ness in ways that may increase the weakness, 
or augment the harm done by us even when 
we seek to do good. Let us rather seek the 
cause of the weakness under consideration in 
terms of things that are more fundamental 
and that are of necessity vital facts of the 
Bible School organization. 

May it not be possible that our failure to 
adequately recognize and provide for the grow¬ 
ing personality of the pupils has contributed 
to the weakness? Ought there not be more 
of a differentiation for the several ages of the 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 107 

pupils than is afforded by the differently 
colored quarterlies, or even by an “ adaptation 
treatment ” of the lesson material ? 

Might not the curriculum of the Bible 
School be enriched so as to include Christian 
biography, from whatever period chosen ? At 
the stage of life when boys and girls are most 
in need of materials suitable for the making of 
life ideals, could not the Bible School furnish 
much of such material from the life-stories of 
those who have loved and served, sacrificed 
and suffered for, the Christ ? The Bible would 
remain the core of the curriculum. These 
lives are but an objective, impersonated pre¬ 
sentation of the Bible’s truths. Nor would 
this enrichment need to stop at biography. 
There is possible a co-ordination of literature 
with Bible School work that, it seems, might 
be made to appeal to those whom we lose at 
the very age at which we should expect them 
to enter into the King’s service. 

Along with this need of curriculum enrich¬ 
ment, may it not be that a failure to recognize 
the appearance of the age of reasoning, of 
wanting to see some of the hidden relations 


io8 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

of things, may help to explain our weakness ? 
True it is that the mystery of godliness is 
great, and that much of the vital truth to be 
taught passes our powers of comprehension. 
But this same wall of mystery is all about us, 
wherever we go; science, if it does anything, 
increases, rather than dispels it for us. The 
Duke of Argyle points out an experience com¬ 
mon to many, when he speaks of the sense of 
mystery: 

“The sense of mystery which is some¬ 
times so oppressive to us, and which is 
never more oppressive than when we try 
to fathom and understand some of the com¬ 
monest questions affecting our own life and 
nature. . . .” 1 

Being surrounded thus by mystery, so far as 
ultimate relations hold, is no more an excuse 
for denying to youth an opportunity of react¬ 
ing mentally upon proximate spiritual rela¬ 
tions and facts than it is for denying to them 
an opportunity of reacting upon proximate 
natural relations and facts. 

The facts of the revelation of God to us 

1 “Unity of Nature,” page 186. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 109 

afford abundant opportunity for reasoning and 
reflection—a process that is attractive to ado¬ 
lescents. The realm of application of truth to 
life and its many problems affords excellent 
chance for appeal to this growing mental 
function. Classes of young people thus led to 
react upon material presented are likely to be 
classes that will find the Bible School inter¬ 
esting long after classes merely lectured to 
have disintegrated, with a consequent loss to 
the school and the Church. 

The weakness may be partly accounted for 
by the divorcement of Church activities from 
many of the interests of life. Were the 
Church, with the fellowship of her members, 
to provide for social, physical, intellectual 
refreshment and development—were she to 
take back to herself the function she has 
so completely relegated to other institutions, 
might we not then find her hold on the young 
much more secure than it now is ? 

One cannot talk other than tentatively of it 
as yet. But can we not assert that a divorce¬ 
ment between the religious professions of 
parents and their home lives, their business 


no Studies in Religious Nurture . 

and social interests, seems to empty of all 
attractiveness for many a young life the con¬ 
cept of religion, and thus contributes to an 
alienation from things that are religious, that 
are under the direction of the Church ? 

Who can assert that the absence of adults 
from the Bible School is not a large factor in 
the loss of adolescents? To expect to hold the 
young for the Bible School when it is shunned 
by the mature, is as difficult a task as is that 
of getting collegians to enter into the spirit 
of a chapel service at which the faculty 
is conspicuous because of its absence. Why 
should we thus fly in the face of the great law 
of social imitation ? Shall the Church expect 
adolescents to show a state of grace which will 
enable them, as they go to the Bible School, 
to stumble over the feet of “ Sunday-supple- 
ment’’-reading parents; or shall it demand 
that the “ supplementers ” themselves shall go 
to the Bible School— -for the sake of the youth , 
if not for their own spiritual needs ? 

There may be another factor in the weak¬ 
ness. Does the Bible School find enough for 
its members to do, by way of acting out the 


Studies in Religious Nurture. hi 

truths that are taught ? Have we been wise 
to the significance of action upon a truth or 
a principle ? Have we pondered carefully the 
fact that the wise man, who built on char¬ 
acter-rock, was the man who heard and did 
the words? Should we not provide in as 
large measure as possible for this doing, thus 
at once making the Bible School a center of 
usefulness in the community, and a means of 
growth through exercise to its members ? 


VII. 

BIBLE SCHOOL WORK AND CHILD- 

STUDY. 



BIBLE SCHOOL WORK AND CHILD- 
STUDY. 


What shall be the aim of the Bible School ? 
To this question we might expect a sub¬ 
stantial agreement of answers; but our ex¬ 
pectations are disappointed as we look into 
the recent literature of Bible School work. 

Two main tendencies are to be discovered. 
One tendency would make of the Bible School 
an institution for the teaching of mere moral¬ 
ity, dissociated from any religious teaching. 1 
The other tendency lays so much emphasis on 
the teaching of religious truths, that there is 
left but little, if any, room for a helpful touch¬ 
ing of the moral life. 2 

With the former of these two contentions we 
have little to do. It will appeal to a class of 
people. But to persons who accept the great 
commission of Jesus Christ it will present 
nothing in self-commendation. The teach- 

1 Sheldon’s “ Ethical Culture Sunday School.” 

2 Brown, “ Sunday School Movements in America.” 

(« 5 ) 


n6 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

ing of morality, with the elimination of the 
chief dynamic of morality from the teaching, 
is a vocation unworthy of those intent upon 
the King’s service. 

The contention that it is desirable to re¬ 
strict the work of the Bible School to the 
development of the spiritual nature of the 
child, to the exclusion of the moral, is one 
that will have many conflicts before it can win 
the field. For, however learnedly and zeal¬ 
ously it may be contended for, it overlooks the 
fundamental fact that religious teaching, to be 
effective, must not be dissociated from the 
affairs of every-day life. It is the man who wills 
to do God’s will who really and permanently 
comes to “ know of the doctrine.” This con¬ 
tention overlooks the significance to the re¬ 
ligious life of ethical habituation, the phi¬ 
losophy of which offers the most satisfactory 
explanation of backsliding obtainable, ex¬ 
plains the refusal of many to enter the King’s 
service, and accounts in some measure for the 
uphilliness of religious work. To refuse to 
the Bible School the privilege of touching and 
of trying to touch the moral natures of chil- 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 117 

dren, is to make impossible a putting of relig¬ 
ious instruction on the plane of the experiences 
of the children. To deny this privilege to the 
Bible School is to compel it to concern itself 
with the theoretical and metaphysical affairs 
of theology—a thing absurd, so long as the 
Bible School works with children. 

If, however, we should grant this contention 
in theory, such conditions as are now found 
by the Bible School render its acceptance in 
practice impossible. The Bible School must 
include the moral development of children in 
its aim. If it does not do this, there are many 
lives into which the moral may never enter. 
For many are the homes to-day that are en¬ 
tirely unable to touch their children in a 
morally uplifting way—the fault not resting 
with the children. Many are the homes 
whose touch makes for a negative morality. 
Many, too, are the homes whose indirect 
influence counteracts direct efforts that are 
made to secure moral conduct on the part 
of the children. Turning to the public 
schools, we find them professing to attend 
to the moral development of children; but 


n8 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

in reality the work of the schools is so in¬ 
tensely intellectual, that in many of them the 
atmosphere is, in some respects, almost im¬ 
moral. At least, it falls far short of the altru¬ 
istic atmosphere which is generated where the 
religion of the King is taught in its purity. 
Thus, the home and the school often fail to 
touch helpfully the moral nature of children. 
For this failure it is the privilege of the Bible 
School to atone. To the end that this atone¬ 
ment may be made, we believe that the Bible 
School must include in its aim, as an impor¬ 
tant part of it, the helpful touching of the 
moral nature of children. The chief aim of 
the Bible School, the aim to which all others 
must be subordinated, is that of a development 
of the moral and of the religious natures of 
children that shall result in better living and 
in a surrender of self to the service of Jesus 
Christ. 

That the Bible School in but a small 
measure atones for the neglect of home and 
public school, is known to no one better 
than to those interested in the Bible School. 
It needs few, if any, of the unsympathetic 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 119 

criticisms that have been made of its work. 
There is ground for criticisms of its work. 
Yet a study of much of the adverse criticism 
shows that the critics expect Bible School 
work to advance with strides befitting a Hia¬ 
watha, removing obstacles as by a blow from 
his magical mittens. This is an unjust expec¬ 
tation. Such advance has never been seen in 
educational thought and practice. Slow has 
been the process by which many of our present 
educational truths have won acceptance. In 
comparison with the movements of develop¬ 
ment in educational history, the development 
in Bible School thought and practice does not 
suffer seriously. To a candid mind, the Bible 
School of to-day is not, as has been recently 
asserted, “ fifty years behind the day.” But 
it, as the public school, has not yet reached 
the condition of perfection. 

The Bible School of to-day sets before itself 
one of the world’s great problems, that of lead¬ 
ing a child into full manhood or womanhood 
consecrated to Jesus Christ, and ready for serv¬ 
ice in His name. In its effort to solve this prob¬ 
lem, it claims the privilege of getting help from 


120 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

any available source ; and, in the exercise of 
this privilege, it has turned hopefully to child- 
study, that movement that more than any 
other characterizes the educational thought 
of the opening years of the twentieth century. 

The child-study movement, as we know it, 
dates from the year 1881, when Professor 
Preyer, gave to the world the results of his 
patient, painstaking, laborious study of one of 
his children. Children had been systematic¬ 
ally studied long before this; but never so 
much so as now. Never was there so much 
interest shown in the results of the study. 
From this time on study after study was 
made. With increasing frequency, and in sev¬ 
eral languages, reports of studies appeared. 
To-day, the literature of the subject is volu¬ 
minous, the product of some of the world’s 
most scientific minds. In this literature there 
is much that is of permanent value, much 
that is helpful. To this literature the Bible 
School looks for help. 

It is easily possible for it to err in its expec¬ 
tation of help from child-study literature. It 
is possible to expect an unreasonable amount 


Studies in Religiotis Nurture. 121 

of help, and it is possible that some tinge of 
chagrin may be felt when it is seen that child- 
study may not have much to give that is new. 
Let us not expect too much; for child-study 
labors under great disadvantages. Let us not 
expect all its statements to be new; for chil¬ 
dren have been observed by adults since chil¬ 
dren have been coming, with their blessings, 
into the lives of men. 

The Bible School looks to child-study for 
help. Reasonably does it do so. 

For, there is a growing conviction in the 
minds of educational thinkers that there are 
laws of growth and development, spiritual and 
moral, as well as intellectual and physical, 
which must be recognized by those who would 
deal effectually and intelligently with the 
growing child. They believe that there are 
conditions that favor and facilitate growth; 
that there are conditions that interfere with 
and prevent growth. The idea that develop¬ 
ment is a haphazard process, uncontrolled by 
law, no longer holds the “bad eminence” 
it once held—though it still lurks in an occa¬ 
sional dark corner. Dr. Oppenheim speaks 


122 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

of “ definite laws of development ” that “ act 
just as steadily and ruthlessly as the laws of 
gravitation, of the conservation of energy.” 
Few persons can be found who will call for a 
demonstration of the facts here asserted. 

It is to the study of these laws that child- 
study devotes its efforts. If, then, any branch 
of investigation is prepared to speak helpfully 
on the matter of the development of human 
nature along moral and spiritual lines, that 
branch of investigation ought to be child-study. 

Possibly the most fundamental fact that 
child-study teaches us, a fact that is entering 
more and more into educational practice, 
whether in public school or in Bible School, 
is the fact of the existence of a difference be¬ 
tween child-nature and adult-nature. This 
fact is strenuously insisted on, and is a vital¬ 
izing principle in child-training. It has im¬ 
portant implications for Bible School work. 

The formerly-held notion of child-nature 
regarded the child as essentially similar to 
the adult, differing only in “ experience, 
knowledge, and strength.” This being the 
case, the way to know how to treat children 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 


was to study carefully the operations of the 
adult mind, and to deduce from this study the 
desired rules of procedure. This older notion 
regarded the child as developing “ in a straight 
line from infancy to maturity ” at a uniform 
rate, and as requiring at all the stages of its 
development practically the same conditions 
of growth. What a seven-year old child re¬ 
quired was required, too, by a younger and an 
older child, save that a diluting or a con¬ 
densing of the treatment was allowed, to meet 
the differences in experience, knowledge, and 
strength. 

The newer notion, the one taught by child- 
study, and the one the Bible School must 
adopt—has adopted in many instances—no 
longer regards the child as a “ little man or 
woman.” On the contrary, he is distinct 
from the adult, and passes through several 
stages of development, each of which is dis¬ 
tinct from the adult stage, as well as from 
each of the other stages, and requires a treat¬ 
ment different in kind rather than in degree 
from the treatment of the other stages. His 
development, at times very rapid, at others 


124 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

slow, is apt to occur in a zigzag line, by fits 
and starts, now following one line of interest, 
now another. This newer notion thinks that 
the child should be treated in the light of a 
study of his own nature rather than in that of 
a study of adult nature. 

A little reflection shows how divergent must 
be the practices based on these two ways of 
viewing children. When Charles Dickens 
made Dr. Blimber say to Mr. Dombey, who 
had brought his young son to the “ educa¬ 
tional hothouse,” kept by Dr. Blimber, “ We’ll 
make a man of him,” he gave expression to 
the “ little man ” idea of education. We are 
led to think he intended this to be contempt¬ 
uous. For, when he made Paul Dombey look 
into the face of Dr. Blimber and say, “ Please, 
sir, I’d rather be a child,” he put into litera¬ 
ture its most pathetic and profound appeal 
against the custom of short-circuiting child¬ 
hood into maturity. The early stages are 
important factors in the development of suc¬ 
ceeding ones. True maturity comes only after 
a full and free growth in each of the earlier 
stages. Parents, public school and Bible 


Studies in Religions Nurture . 


!25 


School teachers are slowly learning the lesson 
of the importance of the tadpole’s tail to the 
development of the frog. Out of, through, 
and by means of these earlier stages must the 
child grow into maturity. To this full ma¬ 
turity each stage makes a contribution, losing 
in the process of development those traits that 
so much worry parents or teachers, who be¬ 
lieve in having children act as if they were 
little men and women. There seems to be 
much truth in Towell’s lines: 

“ From lower to the higher next, 

Not to the top, is Nature’s text; 

And embryo good, to reach full stature, 

Absorbs the evil in its nature.” 

If this view of childhood is correct, changes 
must be made in much of our treatment of 
children. If this view is correct, we should 
be careful as to how we hold adult standards 
before the children. If this view is correct, 
there is much work to be done by way of 
getting clearer views of the nature of those 
with whom we w T ork. If this view is correct, 
how noble, how exalted the work of the Bible 
School workers! 


VIII. 


THE DOCTRINE OF INTEREST. 


THE DOCTRINE OF INTEREST. 


Does the Bible School aim to secure a “ de¬ 
velopment of the moral and of the religious 
natures of children that shall result in better 
living and in a surrender of self to the service 
of Jesus Christ”? How, then, shall it pro¬ 
ceed to a realization of this aim ? However 
the answers that various Bible School work¬ 
ers would give to this question might differ, 
they would, doubtless, all emphasize one fact, 
that of the necessity for the use of the Bible 
in the work of the Bible School. The 
agreement that would be found in these an¬ 
swers makes unnecessary any attempt to dem¬ 
onstrate the supremacy of the Bible in the 
curriculum of the Bible School. 

The Bible School must teach the Bible’s 
truths. They must be taught to the child (all 
pupils). Here are the two elements in our 
problem. How shall we relate them, combine 
them, give the former to the latter? No an¬ 
swer can claim completeness that ignores in- 
9 (129) 


130 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

terest as a fundamental condition of our 
teaching the Bible’s truths to the pupils of 
the classes. If we merely seek to have the 
child retain the truths taught, if we are satis¬ 
fied when we, by a few questions, discover 
that the truths have been retained, when 
the truth can be written out and exchanged 
for tickets or percentages or for a certificate of 
promotion to a higher grade—if we seek no 
more than this, we must needs reckon with 
interest. And, if we are concerned about 
things more significant than the mere reten¬ 
tion of material and want to so present the 
truths we teach that they shall work out for 
morality and piety in the lives of those 
taught, our reckoning must still be with in¬ 
terest—an absolutely necessary condition of 
retention, of recollection, of helpful perma¬ 
nency in a pupil’s life. Without interest the 
gate to the citadel of child-life is hopelessly 
barred to any subject-matter we would have 
admitted. 

In passing, let us refer to a frequently over¬ 
looked factor that makes for a lack of interest, 
with its attendant circumstances of restless- 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 131 

ness, inattention and deafness to the truth 
that is presented. This overlooked factor is 
the ever-present, always-operative physical 
factor. Some are disposed to treat this factor 
as unworthy of consideration. Wise teachers 
in all schools know its paramount importance. 
Impurity of the atmosphere, an abnormally 
high or low temperature of the room, physical 
discomfort arising from an unadjusted seat, 
the fatigue resulting from prolonged and un- 
participated-in opening exercises, the lighting 
of the room, the “sitting still” that many 
schools require, the crowding of the class; 
some, or all, of these may contribute to the 
low tide of interest that makes a settling into 
the sands of indifference and inattention likely 
to occur at any time. 

Approaching the doctrine of interest from 
the practical side, it may be said to have three 
distinct stages of development . At the present 
time, by different persons, we find all these 
stages believed in. Some persons have grown 
through the first two into the third. Some 
are still in the first stage; some in the second. 
There is a conservatism that keeps many from 


132 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

accepting the third, that makes them employ 
interest in only the first two stages of the doc¬ 
trine. Yet it is with the third stage that 
child-study has to deal. It is here that the 
literature of child-study is prolific of help 
and of suggestion. 

In the first stage of the doctrine there is a 
strong conviction as to the significance of in¬ 
terest as a factor in the teaching process. 
This conviction has crystalized into the prac¬ 
tical guide, “ Make your work interesting.” 
But this precept is found to be as confusing to 
those who really want help as would be a finger¬ 
board at the intersection of many roads if it 
merely read, “ One of these roads leads to 
Blank.” 

The breadth of this precept has given free¬ 
dom to the inventive instinct of humanity, 
which, believing that interest is an external 
thing and has nothing to do, of necessity, 
with the subject-matter in hand, save to create 
a reason for enduring its presentation, has 
given us a most interesting array of devices, 
whereby work can be “made interesting.” 
In the fertile soil of this precept a rank growth 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 133 

of expedients and devices is found, and in 
many a day school, and Bible School as well, 
the work of education is largely reduced to 
the work of cultivating and applying these 
devices. 

But the interest thus secured is no guaran¬ 
tee of the occurrence of an educative process. 
On the contrary there is a danger connected 
w r ith this phase of interest against which 
every teacher should scrupulously guard. It 
has been truly written that when there is a 
high degree of interest awakened by external 
devices we may suspect the teaching to be dead 
and formal. And the significant fact is that 
this death and formality in the teaching pro¬ 
cess is likely to be induced by the effort to 
excite external interest, is causatively related 
to the devices relied upon by the teachers. 
Basedow with his cookie alphabet and the pri¬ 
mary teacher with her “ hearts, ladders, crosses, 
crowns, and blackboard intricacies,” have the 
same task—that of not distracting the mind 
from the truth to be taught to the symbol or 
illustration intended as a conveyor of truth. 
The task is difficult. 


134 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

It is to be feared that some of the work 
done in the Bible School does not rise above 
this conception of interest. The parapher¬ 
nalia of many a primary room speaks of the 
reign of this idea that makes interest “ an ex¬ 
ternal contrivance to persuade the pupil to 
endure the subject being taught.” 

A second stage of the doctrine of interest is 
the stage that Herbart and his followers have 
strongly contended for. This stage, like the 
former, emphasizes the significance, the neces¬ 
sity of interest in any effort to teach. But 
unlike the former, this view does not rely on 
external devices to secure interest—an interest 
that will “ persuade the pupil to endure the sub¬ 
ject being taught.” This second view regards 
interest as a result as well as a condition of 
teaching. It holds that the proper teaching 
of a subject must create an interest in the 
subject; and, conversely, that a lack of inter¬ 
est in a subject argues an improper teaching 
of the same. It was Pestalozzi, “ that wisest 
of schoolmasters,” a man from whom Herbart 
learned much, who wrote : 

“There are scarcely any circumstances 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 135 

in which a want of application in children 
does not proceed from a want of interest; 
and there are, perhaps, none under which a 
want of interest does not originate in the 
mode of treatment adopted by the teacher. 
I would go so far as to lay it down as a rule, 
that whenever children are inattentive, and 
apparently take no interest in a lesson, the 
teacher should always first look to himself 
[his manner of presentation?] for a reason.” 
According to this stage of the doctrine any 
subject can be presented to children in such a 
way as to create an interest in the same, if the 
subject is one that can be related to the chil¬ 
dren’s experiences. If the subject admits of an 
interpretation in terms of things already known 
by the children, and is so presented as to be in¬ 
terpreted by what they already know, interest 
will result, with all its attendant benefits to 
retention and recollection, with its accom¬ 
panying desire to look into the matter further, 
with its thrill of pleasure arising from the fact 
that the mind has been making a conquest, 
has enlarged its realm, expanded its kingdom, 
and made new facts its subjects. 


136 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

This stage of the doctrine has given us a 
practical precept that is more definite and 
directive and helpful than the one of the pre¬ 
ceding stage. This precept has been variously 
stated. “ Proceed from the known to the un¬ 
known,’’ some say. Others improve upon 
this by saying, “to the related unknown.’’ 
However the precept may be stated, it calls 
upon us to couple to the train of the child’s 
experiences the new matter we wish to pre¬ 
sent, and to secure this coupling by means of 
some element common to both the old and the 
new material. If this is done the new soon 
becomes old and familiar, and moves off as a 
part of the train of mental life. The coupling 
process is accompanied by interest. 

Two observations should here be made in 
referring to this fundamental principle of 
teaching—a principle worthy of a treatment 
sufficiently exhaustive to admit of numerous 
concrete illustrations of its use in the teach¬ 
ing process. 

The first of these observations tells us of the 
duty placed upon the teachers of acquainting 
themselves with the contents of the children’s 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 137 

experiences. This is an absolute condition— 
one that is often unfulfilled. Herein is the 
secret of our failure to interest, to create an 
interest that shall become our helper and 
friend in our effort to touch child-life. 

The second of the observations is of a cau¬ 
tionary nature. It is becoming customary to 
use an “ approach,” or “starting point ” to the 
lesson containing the truth to be taught. 
This is well. But there is need of care that 
in using these we do not miss the spirit wdiile 
retaining the letter of the second stage of the 
doctrine of interest. The story which so fre¬ 
quently constitutes the “ approach ” or “ start¬ 
ing point,” may nicely pave the way to the 
lesson. But the story that is told demands 
that it itself be properly related to the expe¬ 
riences of the child in order that it may be 
understood. The mere telling of a story that 
introduces the lesson nicely is not necessarily 
a satisfying of the conditions of interest. On 
the other hand, it may be a positive detri¬ 
ment, preventing the comprehension of the 
lesson by introducing unrelated elements. 
The “point of contact ” is to be found in the 


138 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

child’s experience, not given to him in a story 
that does not properly relate itself to his ex¬ 
perience. There may be many times when 
the story approach is injurious, when a free 
conversation with the children is much to be 
preferred by way of preparing for the truth to 
be presented. There are “ approaches ” and 
approaches. 

The last of the three stages of the doctrine 
of interest has come to us largely as the result 
of the enthronement of the child in the edu¬ 
cational realm. 

This stage ignores the first stage, but fully 
grants the validity and usefulness of the sec¬ 
ond stage. It leaves, almost entirely, to the 
second stage the question of method and 
takes as its own special problem the question 
of the material that must be used in an effort 
to assist the child in reaching his fullest 
development. 

The third is more complex than either of 
the other stages, and because of this com¬ 
plexity it lays no claim to finality, to having 
spoken the last word upon the subject of in¬ 
terest. It insists vigorously, however, upon 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 139 

the validity of the several elements that enter 
into its complex nature. It has assured itself 
that it is moving in the right direction in its 
search for what is permanent and serviceable 
in educational thought and practice. It be¬ 
lieves that when the final solution of the edu¬ 
cational problem will have been reached, its 
teachings will be retained as no insignificant 
part of the then accepted body of educational 
truth. 

The following elements may be said to en¬ 
ter into the conception of interest as held by 
those who accept the third stage of the doc¬ 
trine of interest : 

1. Children’s interests lie naturally along 
certain general lines. 

2. These lines vary with the growth and 
development reached by children, every child 
passing through these several successive lines 
in the course of his development. 

3. These lines of interest, not being the 
result of education, are regarded as an ex¬ 
pression of the needs of the developing chil¬ 
dren. As such they become, in part, deter¬ 
minative in the choice of the material to be 


140 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

given to children in the several stages of 
growth. 

4. Material adapted to the interests of the 
several stages of growth lends itself most 
easily and effectually to educative processes. 

5. The teacher should study the special in¬ 
terests of pupils in the light of the general 
interests of children. This study should 
guide one in the work of teaching. 

The following postulates are tentatively 
offered to this statement of the elements of 
the conception of interest in its third stage: 

1. The lines of interest may be satisfied by 
material that is morally indifferent—making 
for morality or for immorality. 

2. The doctrine of interest has, therefore, 
no voice upon the question of the moral 
quality of the material that shall be offered 
children. 

If this postulate be accepted it becomes 
evident that the doctrine of interest is not su¬ 
preme and unlimited by other principles. It 
is not a self-sufficient principle in the work of 
either the secular school or of the Bible School. 
It is not adequate to the determination of 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 141 

what is to be presented to children. It has 
been said, u The law of interest tells us what 
shall not be placed before the children, ■’ 1 
things that are not interesting. But this is 
not a sufficiently comprehensive statement. 
It tells us some things that are not to be given. 
There are other things that are to be kept 
from children, and these things are from the 
class of interesting things. The complete 
guide, in terms of interest, to material to be 
presented would read : Give the children only 
interesting material , though 

“ not everything that is interesting , arid 
not anything just because it is interest¬ 
ing.” 1 

But this leaves us in need of a criterion 
other than that of interest to be used in con¬ 
junction with interest in Bible School curricu¬ 
lum construction. Ethical and religious 
standards supply this needed and additional 
criterion. 

3. Our hope is in the fact that moral mate¬ 
rial satisfies the demands of interest as well as 
immoral material does. 

1 “ Picture Work,” W. L. Hervey, page 83. 


142 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

This view of interest, if accepted as a guid¬ 
ing principle in education, will both antagonize 
and be antagonized. 

It antagonizes several notions, which often 
manifest themselves in theory and in practice. 
(1) It antagonizes that whole educational atti¬ 
tude that would approach the child from the 
standpoint of the adult ; that would use the 
molds of adult life and standards and interests 
in dealing with children. (2) It antagonizes 
the tendency to select material from a logical 
or from a chronological standpoint, whether in 
religious or in secular education. (3) It antag¬ 
onizes, too, the belief that only that which is 
more or less distasteful and un interesting has 
real worth in education, such things being 
valuable because of the moral culture that 
comes from working upon them (!). 

No one of these three antagonized proposi¬ 
tions has any longer a respectable standing in 
educational thought; each struggles to live, 
but its struggles are less and less vigorous. 
Soon the gravestones of these propositions will 
be as milestones on the road of educational 
progress. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 143 

But this view has been antagonized. The 
analogy of the child’s “ wanting only dessert ” 
has been invoked against it. It is probable 
that the view could defend itself against this 
argument if it should be shown that the 
analogy is seriously relevant. Under the cap¬ 
tion, 11 A Pedagogical Heresy,” this view of 
interest is censured and held up to ridicule. 
The writer of the article suggests no substi¬ 
tute for the principle he would remove. We 
would need to go back to the “ adult stand¬ 
ard ” or wander in the darkness of experiment. 
Ten years have passed since the article on “ A 
Pedagogical Heresy ” appeared. In this time 
the view of interest there antagonized has 
won almost universal acceptance. 

In 1890 Alfred Binet made the pioneer 
movement in the systematic study of chil¬ 
dren’s interests. But long before Prof. Binet’s 
study appeared we find the main contention of 
the third stage of the doctrine of interest clearly 
set forth by Herbert Spencer. He says : 

“ At each age the intellectual life which 
a child likes is a healthful one for it; and 
conversely. There is a spreading opinion 


144 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

that the rise of an appetite for any kind of 
knowledge implies that the unfolding mind 
has become fit to assimilate it and needs it 
for the purposes of growth.” 

Again, as a reason for relinquishing a course 
of procedure that produces no interest, or less 
interest than another course, he says: 

“ * • * For a child’s intellectual instincts 
are more trustworthy than our reasonings.” 
These sentiments have been unqualifiedly 
accepted by many eminent workers upon the 
problem of the developing child. Prof. Binet was 
followed by Profs. Barnes and Shaw, who made 
similar studies. Since then studies of various 
lines of children’s interests have multiplied. 

Recent writers who concern themselves 
with the problem of the material that should 
enter the curriculum base their work upon 
this view of interest as a fundamental princi¬ 
ple. The words, “based on the psychology 
of the child,” as they appear in the title of a 
recent French work by Paul Facombe, show 
plainly the prominence he gives to the child. 
His book is a plea for the recognition of the 
interests of children. Prof. James says : 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 145 

“ Begin with the line of his native inter¬ 
ests, and offer him objects that have some 
immediate connection with these.” 

Both the second and third stages of interest 
find expression in this statement. 

Professor Dewey holds that 

“ Only through the continual and sym¬ 
pathetic observation of childhood’s interests 
can the adult enter into the child’s life and 
see what it is really ready for, and upon what 
material it could work most readily and 
fruitfully.” 

Professor Dawson, after citing seventeen 
distinct studies of children’s interests, says : 

“ It is evident, therefore, that the princi¬ 
ple of interest has the sanction of scientific 
research, and that it is rapidly becoming a 
standard for estimating the material of in¬ 
struction.” 

In Prof. Charles McMurry’s “ General 
Method ” we read the following: 

“ The neglect to take proper cognizance 
of this principle of interest in laying out 
courses of study and in the manner of pre¬ 
senting subjects, is certainly one of the 
10 


146 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

gravest charges that ever can be brought 

against the schools.” 

Here, again, we find the second and the 
third stages contended for. 

In spite of this consensus of opinion and 
conviction, the third stage may be “a peda¬ 
gogical heresy.” If so, there will be a great 
conflagration when the heretics are burned, 
and among those consumed by the conflagra¬ 
tion will be found many Bible School teach¬ 
ers, faithful workers, alert for the helpful 
voice of recent thought, yet accepting nothing 
merely because it is recent. 

The present is, however, not alone in the 
recognition of this principle. With this it is 
as with other educational principles. They 
have been emphasized in the past by some 
educational thinker or thinkers, either theoret¬ 
ically or practically recognized, and have then 
been lost sight of for a period of time. The 
present revives these strans of thought, studies 
them carefully, states them clearly, puts them 
to practical tests, and, having satisfied itself of 
their validity and utility, permanently weaves 
them into the educational fabric. So has it 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 


I 47 


really been with this conception of interest 
with which we are now concerned. It under¬ 
lies the best educational thought of the past, 
and consciously or unconsciously, it has helped 
to form and direct that which is best in the 
past. In educational, as in other lines, there 
are few new things, after all. 

What shall be our attitude to the doctrine 
of interest ? In which of the stages shall we 
consent to rest ? Shall we refuse to let our¬ 
selves grow into the third stage ? There are 
tendencies that would keep us from so doing. 
They are dangerous. Conservatism may be 
disastrous if it leads us to close our eyes to 
truth. 

We have said that no claim is made to hav¬ 
ing said the last word, to having found the 
last fact bearing on this doctrine of interest. 
This is true. There is much to be done. 
The beginning has been made, and but little 
more. But the beginning has marked out the 
direction of the later work. The realm of 
children’s interests must be carefully studied, 
studied repeatedly. These interests must be 
charted carefully, to the end that sailing 


148 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

directions may be more definite. In this work 
that remains to be done we can become help¬ 
ers, should become such, for the sake of the 
children in the Bible Schools. There are 
studies that Bible School workers should 
make, that they can make even better than 
can those who are not closely identified with 
the Bible School. 


IX. 

CHILDREN’S INTERESTS IN THE 

BIBLE. 


i 

















CHILDREN’S INTERESTS IN THE 
BIBLE. 


If we accept the contentions of the third 
stage of the Doctrine of Interest, we are 
brought at once to a consideration of the ma¬ 
terial that shall be employed in the curricu¬ 
lum of the Bible School. 

We have seen that this is to be, almost ex¬ 
clusively, Bible material. Interest does not 
tell us this. The necessity imposed alike by 
the demands of child-nature and by the aim 
of the Bible School forces us to this conclu¬ 
sion. The child is capable of moral and of re¬ 
ligious development, of coming to a personal, 
saving faith in Jesus Christ. To assist in this 
process is the great function of the Bible 
School. The material required for this pro¬ 
cess can be found nowhere else than in the 
Book of God’s own writing. This Book re¬ 
veals what no other literature can set forth, 
save as it does so by the help of the Bible. 

Yet we have deliberately used “ almost ex- 


152 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

clusively.” • For it seems that it is both possi¬ 
ble and desirable to get aid from literature in 
our appeal to the child, and to so use some 
things in literature as to cause them to inter¬ 
pret portions of the word, to hold vividly be¬ 
fore the pupils ideals that objectify teachings 
of the Bible. It seems that there are times 
when portions of literature can be used by way 
of having the pupils exercise their powers of 
ethical judgment, thus employing material 
studied in the Bible School. It is not un¬ 
desirable that many children be allowed to see 
the prominence the Bible has been given in 
literature, how very much literature is in¬ 
debted to the Bible. All this is made worthy 
our serious thought by the devitalizing way in 
which literature is treated, if treated at all, in 
some of the public school work of the day. 

The Bible being our chief and almost ex¬ 
clusive source of material, any material from 
literature being largely supplementary, what 
shall be the principle that shall guide us in 
choosing from the varied material presented 
in this most wonderful Book ? We are dis¬ 
posed to say that this principle is that of the 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 153 

general interests of children as they shall be 
learned by careful and painstaking observa¬ 
tion. 

There seems to be nothing that can reason¬ 
ably compete with this principle of curricu¬ 
lum formation. Several plans have been tried 
and have done memorable service. But these 
are vulnerable where this principle is not. 
They are tinged largely with the adult point 
of view. They emphasize chronology, or 
logical arrangement or classification. Or they 
lay stress upon covering the entire Bible in a 
specified time. An indefensible postulate 
seems to underlie these plans. This postulate 
says that any portion of Scripture is as serv¬ 
iceable as any other portion for the purpose 
of stimulating and nourishing the moral 
and religious growth of children, regardless 
of their age. The Bible itself refutes this 
postulate. 

In 1 Peter ii. 2, we read : 

“As newborn babes desire the sincere 

milk of the word.” 

Here we have a very plain assertion of the 
need of different food for different stages of 


154 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

growth in the spiritual life, the assertion cloth¬ 
ing itself in terms of the food for the several 
stages of the physical life. In the 

u I have fed yon with milk and not with 
meat ” 

of i Cor. iii. 2, we have the same truth set 
forth by another writer, who employs the same 
physical analogy. When we turn to Hebrews 
we find the author employing in more detail 
the same analogy to teach the same fact.— 
Heb. v. 12-14. Here we really have granted, 
embryonically, it may be, the principle that is 
striving to-day for recognition at the hands of 
the religious teaching world. 

This postulate, which seems to us to be in¬ 
defensible, has a word or two to say to us. It is 
either true or false. In either case an argument 
for the use of interest is obtained. If the pos¬ 
tulate is false, the field is left to the principle 
of interest; for it would be able soon to rout 
logic and chronology. A few minutes’ bom¬ 
bardment of those principles by a battery 
throwing facts against them would suffice for 
their defeat in the absence of this postulate. 
On the contrary, if this postulate be true, we 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 155 

are by it assured of the perfect safety with 
which we may attempt to employ interest. No 
matter what material we choose, it can be made 
as serviceable as any other. Under this sec¬ 
ond supposition the question for us to answer 
is whether or not any improvement upon the 
present status of things is possible or desirable. 

It should be noted that the principle of in¬ 
terest in its working out will provide for 
logical arrangement and systematic study, 
ultimately and in so far as these are desirable. 

There is the possibility of our granting to 
interest the ruling place in curriculum forma¬ 
tion, and, despite this, by being mistaken as 
to the portions of the Bible that really interest 
and appeal to the several stages of growth, 
not reaching any higher ground than that 
now occupied. “ We all know that the New 
Testament is the child’s part of the Bible,” 
wrote a teacher sometime ago. This state¬ 
ment results from a hasty generalization, or 
from a preconception that has not troubled 
about the facts. It has a basis in fact, but 
contains much more of error than it does of 
truth. There is an early interest in the New 


156 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

Testament; but it is in a very restricted part 
of it. Those parts that have to do with the 
birth and temple appearance of Jesus, those 
parts that are emphasized by the Church fes¬ 
tivals of Easter and Christmas, parts that art 
has so exclusively attended to, are the parts of 
the New Testament that children are most in¬ 
terested in and that lead us, when unguarded, 
to a hasty inference as to the value for chil¬ 
dren of New Testament material. 

We must free ourselves from the effect of 
preconceptions born of our adult interests, 
from the effects of hasty generalizations, and 
give ourselves to a careful, painstaking study 
of children’s interests, if we would fairly and 
adequately test this principle of interest, if we 
would intelligently apply this principle that is 
being crowned in the realm of secular education. 

A beginning along this line has already 
been made by Prof. George E. Dawson, who 
has published the results of his study in the 
July, 1900, issue of the Pedagogical Semi¬ 
nary. He found the following percentages of 
preferences for the respective Testaments at 
the ages indicated: 


Studies in Religioics Nurture. 


NEW TESTAMENT. 

Boys, 8 years, 60 per cent.; 14 years, 32 per cent.; 20 
years, 90 per cent. 

Girls, 8 years, 72 per cent.; 12 years, 40 per cent.; 20 
years, 97 per cent. 

OLD TESTAMENT. 

Boys, 8 years, 40 per cent.; 13 years, 63 per cent.; 20 
years, 12 per cent. 

Girls, 8 years, 28 per cent.; 12 years, 46 per cent.; 20 
years, 3 per cent. 

Interpreting these figures, Prof. Dawson 
concludes: 

“It is probable that the typical boy or 

girl from nine to fourteen years is more at¬ 
tached to the Old Testament than to the 

New.” 

He makes allowances in reaching this con¬ 
clusion, for the influences already referred to 
that emphasize some parts of the New Testa¬ 
ment. In addition to these he holds that the 
percentage of preference for the New Testa¬ 
ment at eight and nine years are higher be¬ 
cause of the fact that adults prefer the New 
Testament, and, in one way or another, force 
this preference on children, thus creating an 


158 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

interest that is not spontaneous. The figures 
show clearly a growing interest in the New 
Testament from thirteen and fourteen years 
for boys and from twelve years for girls. 

This growing interest in New Testament 
material is shown elsewhere in the study. In 
the choice of Bible books boys from thirteen 
years and girls from twelve years show a 
rapidly increasing preference for the Gospels, 
the books that graphically present Jesus. 
This interest in New Testament material is 
but one of several pregnant facts of adoles¬ 
cence. 

Instead, then, of all knowing “ that the 
New Testament is the child’s part of the 
Bible,” we are led to believe that the reverse 
is true. Emphasis is given to this revision of 
opinion by the results of the study, made in 
1901, 1 of the teaching of the crucifixion lesson. 

Pre-judging this study’s teachings, we would 
have looked for a preponderance of New Tes¬ 
tament material in the expressed preferences 

1 Under the auspices of the Primary and Junior Council 
of the Pennsylvania State Sabbath School Association, by 
A. B. Bunn Van Ormer. 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 159 

of the pupils questioned. The Bible Schools 
had been studying the New Testament 
for some time, and its material, through the 
operation of the law of recency of mental 
impression should have been so prominent 
as to have overpowered weak interests in other 
material. 

What does the study teach? From eight 
to twelve years of age, sixty-five per cent, of 
the boys’ selections were from Old Testa¬ 
ment material. Of the preferences of the girls 
of the same age, fifty-nine per cent, were from 
Old Testament material. If one cared to en¬ 
ter into more detail, it would appear that these 
percentages are really low. In view of the 
fact of the study’s having been made when it 
was, when New Testament material was re¬ 
cent, we are compelled to believe that there is 
some significance attaching to the fact of the 
preponderance of Old Testament material. 
There might be some reason for it. That 
reason seems to be found in the “ Doctrine of 
Interest.” 

This study serves another purpose, and be¬ 
cause of this we turn aside for a little while 


160 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

to speak of the validity of the much-used 
“ questionnaire ” method. Dr. Schauffler 1 has 
“cross-questioned” Prof. Dawson’s work on 
“ Children’s Interest in Bible Material,” and as 
a result of this cross-questioning is constrained 
to call in question some of Prof. Dawson’s in¬ 
ferences. It is easy to see loopholes in the 
process of the cross-questioning, though at first 
glance he seems to score against Prof. Daw¬ 
son. Until more details of the process are 
furnished us, Dr. Schauffler has done nothing 
more than to point out a probable source of 
error. He has not shown that error actually 
came from that source. 

One of the lines along which he seeks to 
raise suspicions as to the validity of the Daw¬ 
son results is that of recency of impression. 
The popularity of John the Evangelist with 
the Dawson respondents is to be accounted for, 
Dr. Schauffler says, 

“Not because they had spontaneous in¬ 
terest in John, but because for six months 
previously that had been dinned into them 

1,4 Pastoral Leadership of Sunday School Forces,” 
page 67 f. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 161 

—John, John, John, John; and when you 

turned the stop-cock out ran John first.” 
This “ dinning in ” of John occurred in view 
of the fact “ that for the first six months of 
that year,” (1899, in which the Dawson ques¬ 
tionnaire was issued), “we were in the Gospel 
of John.” Does John thus keep himself in 
the foreground of his narrative ? 

If this reasoning holds good—if recency of 
impression and frequency of repetition (“ din¬ 
ning ”) alone determine the things to be re¬ 
tained and recalled, then the results of our 
study should have made the material of the 
New Testament predominate. For this is the 
material the children had been having. But 
the material that predominated was not that 
over which they had just worked. 

Here was something more than recency, 
more potent than recency. What was it, if 
not a matter of spontaneous interest ? 

And, if the questionnaire is not limited to 
the fields of recency and repetition, it is then 
to us a legitimate instrument of investigation. 

This same study of the crucifixion lesson 
sheds some light where Prof. Dawson’s study 


11 


162 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

does not. His study begins with children 
eight years of age. The one under discussion 
begins with children of four years. Fifty-three 
( 53 ) P er cen t- of the preference of the boys 
from four to eight years, and fifty-nine (59) 
per cent, of the girls of the same age were for 
Old Testament material. This, too, under the 
handicap of the recent teaching of New 
Testament material. 

It does seem that Old Testament material 
should predominate in the teaching of chil¬ 
dren under twelve years of age. And yet one 
should be reasonably positive. The two 
studies referred to are very meager as to the 
number of pupils they included, the latter 
being very much more so than the former. 
But they teach the same lesson in some 
respects. There is a discrepancy between 
them as to the interests at eight years of age 
that urges to a further and more comprehensive 
investigation of the subject. We are firm in 
our belief in the desirability of, the necessity 
for, using interest as a determinator of the 
curriculum; but there is much more to be 
done. Who will co-operate? 


% 



THE CHILD AND THE STORY. 
























THE CHILD AND THE STORY. 


The Bible School, in taking on itself the 
task of serving as a factor in the moral and 
religious growth of the child, has given to 
itself a problem of no little complication. Not 
the least element of this complication is that of 
the intangibility of the object sought after, the 
ease with which real moral or religious growth 
often eludes the careful scrutiny of those 
anxiously looking for evidence of it, the fact 
that growth in this phase of life does not sub¬ 
mit to tabulation in terms of percentage, thus 
making possible a comparison with previously 
reached attainments. So great is this compli¬ 
cation that, because of the limitations under 
which we work and must continue to work, 
we shall never be able to remove it entirely 
and make the work of those interested in 
morality and religion simple and capable of 
absolute comprehension. 

The fact that the problem is a complicated 
one is not without its benefits to us in our 


166 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

effort to be of service to the boys and the girls. 
It gives us constantly something to strive for, 
thus saving us from that intellectual death 
that comes when we feel that we have fully 
comprehended the whole matter. It inspires 
us to an effort to move a little nearer to the 
absolute solution. It encourages us to rely 
on and make use of such laws as have already 
yielded themselves to careful study and obser¬ 
vation. It warns us against the tendency to 
emphasize and magnify some one principle or 
method, to the exclusion of others that may 
come to us well accredited and having stood 
the test of careful experiment. It tells us 
that we may reasonably expect the years to 
bring us more and more help, and it advises 
us to welcome any help they may bring. 

There is another advantage coming from a 
recognition of the complicated nature of our 
problem. Those who reflect on the complica¬ 
tion—may their tribe increase—will become 
more and more willing to possess their souls 
in patience as they await the fruition of 
their faithful seed sowing. Alas, the impa¬ 
tience that we often manifest!—an impatience 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 167 

that bewails the absence of so-called “ results,” 
that chastises itself for their absence, as if 
results were things wholly within our control. 

A failure to duly appreciate the complex 
and difficult nature of the work to be done by 
us, coupled with insufficient knowledge of the 
laws of moral and religious growth, has given 
rise to a demand for immediate results that is 
not in accord with accepted teachings upon 
these things. How hard it is to sow the seed, 
and then, through long months, trust to God, 
operating through laws of His own ordaining, 
to give us the fruitage! Have you never 
been tempted to assist the slowly unfolding 
leaf of the rubber plant in its effort to ma¬ 
ture ? A similar impatience characterizes 
much of our work with children. 

This anxiety for results, we feel, has given 
rise to a custom very much in vogue in our 
efforts along moral and religious lines—that 
of moralizing with children as to what the 
material in hand teaches. It is a practice 
that is antagonized by the thought of more 
recent times, and that finds little sanction in 
the psychology of childhood. It is a practice 


168 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

to which we easily lend ourselves, feeling that 
by pointing the moral we have the more fully 
discharged our obligation to the child. Or, it 
may be a device to which we resort by way of 
easily satisfying our consciences that we have 
done our duty. 

By way of seeing whether or not this moral¬ 
izing custom is worthy the prominence often 
given it, and worthy of our sole reliance in 
our efforts, let us look at some facts that may 
throw light on the question. 

There is a technical term that is destined 
to play a larger and larger role in the educa¬ 
tional world of the century upon which we 
have entered. To this term, and the thought 
for which it stands, we turn, asking for its 
verdict upon the custom of “pointing a 
moral ” as we deal with children. 

Suggestion is the term to which we refer. 

Of the several senses in which this term is 
used in literature, the one in which it is now 
technically used can best be approached 
through hypnotism. The hypnotic subject 
does as the experimentor indicates he shall do, 
however absurd or ridiculous the thing indi- 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 169 

cated may be. He does the thing in a 
mechanical way, as if he had no part in the 
action at all, as if he were merely a tool in the 
hands of the experimentor. And this is just 
what he is. He is a machine that is operated 
by the ideas that are given to him. What¬ 
ever he is told to do, he does, and yet it is not 
he but the idea itself that carries out the ac¬ 
tion. He is powerless to do otherwise than as 
has been indicated to him. This is hypnotic 
suggestion. The presence of an idea in the 
mind is sufficient explanation for the acting 
out of that idea. The idea acts itself out. 
This tendency of an idea thus to work itself 
out into action is called suggestion. But we 
are concerned with hypnotic suggestion only 
as it serves to illustrate the thing we have 
under consideration. Hypnotic suggestion is 
abnormal. The suggestion about which we 
are concerned at present is normal. The ab¬ 
normal helps us to understand the normal, in¬ 
asmuch as there is a similarity between them, 
as well as a difference. 

Normal suggestion is now a recognized fact. 
We are all more or less subject to the laws of 


170 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

its operation, unless we are among the class of 
those who “ suffer from continual absence of 
mind, or those who are hopelessly stupid and 
lack the power of concentration.” Have you 
never stepped to the rhythm of the street 
piano ? Have you never assumed a more erect 
posture upon seeing someone whose carriage 
was more erect than yours ? Have you never 
yawned upon seeing another do the same 
thing? Have you never seen the contagion 
of laughter ? Have you never known any¬ 
one to select an article of clothing upon see¬ 
ing another person wear such an article ? 
Have you never, in reading a biography, 
found yourself taking higher views of life, 
although the biographer made no appeal to 
you to do so ? If you have never known any 
of these experiences, you may be disposed to 
quarrel with Prof. James when he speaks 

“. . . of that mental suggestibility which 
we all, to some degree, possess.” 

Nor will you be likely to accept the statement 
of Dr. Sidis : 

“ Everyone is more or less suggestible.” 
But if these statements should set you to 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 171 

thinking and observing, the facts in the case 
would soon convince you of the substantial 
truthfulness of the statements. 

If it be granted that adults are subject to 
the laws of suggestion, operating under condi¬ 
tions entirely normal, what shall we say of the 
child ? Is he more, or less, susceptible, if sus¬ 
ceptible at all ? 

Suggestion very frequently exerts an in¬ 
fluence on adults that falls short of leading 
to an action. This is the case because of the 
presence in the mind of other and distracting 
ideas, as well as because of the suggestion’s 
having to encounter the force of long-estab¬ 
lished habits, which may be too strong for it. 
We thus have two things that tend to neutral¬ 
ize the suggestion, the presence of ideas other 
than the one suggested, and the presence of 
habits. But both of these things are com¬ 
paratively absent in children. Because of this 
fact we should expect children to be more sus¬ 
ceptible than are adults. This expectation is 
borne out by a careful study of children. The 
fact of their suggestibility can be verified in 
any home, school, or place of play. A very 


172 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

little verification will lead to an acceptance 
of the statement of Guyau, who says : 

“ All children are peculiarly open to sug¬ 
gestion.” 

Having reached the conclusion that children 
are susceptible to the influence of suggestion 
—that an idea in their minds has a strong 
tendency to work itself out into action, 1 we 
may indulge in a little more detail, getting a 
further fact that is important to a decision of 
the question of the advisability of distinctly 
setting forth the moral contained in the ma¬ 
terial we give to the children. 

The Abb 6 de Fenelon, in his “ Education 
of Girls,” given to the public in 1687, says : 

“I even believe that indirect instruc¬ 
tions, which are not so wearisome as les¬ 
sons and remonstrances, are often all that 
you need to make use of.” 

He gives the following illustration of his 
meaning: 

“ One person might occasionally ask an- 

1 “ Every idea is a force, and therefore a commencement 
of an action.”—P. L. Thomas, ‘‘La Suggestion,” etc., 
page 4. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 


173 


other in their [the children’s] presence, 
‘Why do you do this?’ And the other 
might reply, ‘ I do it for such a reason.’ 
For example: ‘ Why do you confess your 
fault ? ’ ‘ Because I would have committed 

a still greater one in disowning it, like a 
coward, by a falsehood, and because nothing 
is nobler than to say frankly, I am wrong.’ ” 
Given an occasion that would justify this 
conversation—and Fenelon warns us against 
affectation—and the children within whose 
hearing it would occur would be more likely, 
upon an opportunity, other things being equal, 
to practice the virtue of frank confession than 
they would be as the result of a direct effort 
to have them do so. 

This thought of the French Abbd is one 
that is to-day being emphasized and used. It 
has been found, by experiment, that the force 
of a suggestion of the kind that now concerns 
us is greater the more indirect the suggestion. 
And conversely, the more direct the suggestion 
is, the less force it will have as a suggestion. 1 
If these facts are accepted, do we have 
1 Sidis : “ The Psychology of Suggestion.” 


174 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

anything that bears on the effort to point a 
moral ? What conclusion may we draw from 
them ? May we not conclude that it may 
often be sufficient for us to concern ourselves 
with the presentation of the truth to the chil¬ 
dren ; and that, when so presented, the truth 
is potent to change a course of action, or to 
indicate a course before unthought of, and to 
impel one along the indicated course ? 

When we read, 

“ Suggestion as a method of control is 
risky in cases where training in judgment 
and choice is one chief benefit of the act. 
It is bad for any rational being to be for¬ 
ever hoodwinked into doing this, that and 
the other thing,” 1 

we have a qualification, a limitation to the 
use of suggestion pointed out. But in so far 
as our concern is with matters of moral and 
religious nurture, in so far does this stricture 
upon suggestion not apply. Our concern is 
not merely that particular acts may be done. 
We are concerned that they may be done and 
become habitual in the light of principle. 
1 “ Elements of Psychology.”—Thorndike, page 287. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 175 

And these principles can often be coupled 
with the act in which they find expression at 
the time of, and by means of, the suggestion. 
Rather than seeking to u hoodwink ” into do¬ 
ing “ this, that and the other thing,” we seek 
by means of suggestion to indicate the thing 
that ought to be done and to aid in a decision 
to do the thing, to set going a factor that shall 
in part counteract the fact of the existence of 
a line of least resistance making for the un¬ 
ethical, the unrighteous ; we seek to give the 
good an equal, or a more nearly equal, chance 
with the bad to find expression in action. 

If this “hoodwinking” objection to the 
use of suggestion is accepted and applied im¬ 
partially it can be made to tell against the 
practice of moralizing and against direct in¬ 
junctions and commands to children, as well as 
against suggestion. Though the former are 
not cases of “hoodwinking,” they, equally 
with suggestion, would deprive the child of 
the “ training in judgment and choice.” 

The psychology of suggestion contains sev¬ 
eral valuable pedagogical applications that lie 
outside our present purpose. But in passing 


176 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

to the application we now want to make, we 
wish merely to refer to the fact that sugges¬ 
tion warns us against presenting negative ma¬ 
terial, teaching children what they are not to 
do. It tells us to use positive material only, 
until an issue compels a negation. 

The writer, some years ago, heard an edu¬ 
cational worker at a teachers’ institute tell 
the story of the mother who, on going away 
from home for awhile, called her children for 
a few final precautionary prohibitions. Her 
conference with the children ran as follows: 

“ Children, you are not to go up-stairs 
while I am away. But if you do go up¬ 
stairs, you are not to go into the back room. 
But if you do go into the back room, you 
are not to play with the beans piled there. 
But if you should play with the beans, do 
not put any into your noses.” 

There is no need to finish the narrative for any 
persons who know child-life. The physician 
eventually succeeded in preventing the nasal 
cavities from becoming vegetable gardens. 

The story seemed to have been made to 
order. But it is not at all improbable. The 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 177 

writer knows of kittens having been put 
“ into the Baltimore heater,” and of little pigs 
having been run through a windmill after 
thoughtful parents had enjoined upon their 
children not to do these things. Thus does 
the law operate, as any fireside will abun¬ 
dantly verify. 

Nor is this prohibition upon telling children 
what they are not to do, this pedagogical in¬ 
junction against parents and teachers from 
whose lips “don’t” is ever falling, an arbi¬ 
trary thing, nor yet a hasty inference from the 
doctrine of suggestion. It will bear the light 
of antagonism, offering in its own defence the 
following explanation. The picturable part 
of the statement is the part that is potent in 
securing action, as has been explained above. 
But the picturable part of a prohibition is the 
positive part. The negative part is not pict¬ 
urable. Because of this, the words call up an 
action-picture in the mind. When there, it 
tends to realize itself, even in spite of the pro¬ 
hibition. A child’s acting contrary to the 
prohibition is not a case of willful disobedi¬ 
ence, of necessity. The prohibition, through 


12 


178 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

the potency of its picturable part, sets a child 
a task difficult of accomplishment—a task no 
less than that of voluntarily inhibiting the 
tendency to action that always accompanies 
the picturable part of a prohibition. The 
yielding to this tendency on the child’s part, 
his failure to achieve success in inhibiting the 
tendency, is quite as helpful a way of view¬ 
ing the “ disobedience ” as is that of reading 
his action in the light of moral reprobateness. 
A positive injunction disobeyed raises an en¬ 
tirely different issue. With the abolition of 
the “ don’ting ” attitude and practice will dis¬ 
appear much of the so-called disobedience of 
childhood. 

And now, what of The Child and the 
Story? For this is our concern. Nothing so 
meets the psychological demands of sugges¬ 
tion in dealing with the moral and religious 
training of children as does the story. The 
story has its place in education from several 
points of view, but no point of view pleads 
more strongly for the use of the story than 
does the one under consideration. Could we 
learn the art of substituting the indirect for 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 179 

the direct, the story for the moralizing and the 
exhortation, to say nothing of the nagging and 
the “ don’ting ” of so many homes and schools 
and Bible Schools, the task of helping chil¬ 
dren to maturity would be less troublesome. 
By means of the story a child can be led into 
new and clearer views of the truth that per¬ 
tains to the life that he may reasonably be 
expected to live at his age and stage of devel¬ 
opment. The story can be used to lead a child 
to see himself in the light of the experience of 
the race, as well as in the light of the revealed 
will of God. The story is the great means 
whereby a child can be led to sit in judgment 
on his own action and life, as David was led 
to do by the prophet’s story. Nothing can so 
mirror the child to himself as can the story. 
No moralizing can so effectually give an ideal 
to the child as can the story. And with it all 
goes the impulse to realize the thing thus in¬ 
directly presented. The story not only brings 
into view the thing to be done ; it furnishes, 
also, an impetus to the doing of the thing.. 

The story is a great dynamic factor in 
moral and religious nurture. 












XI 




THE BIBLE AND THE CHILD. 












I 






























































































































































‘ 






















































































































































THE BIBEE AND THE CHILD. 


From the vocabulary of our everyday life, 
no two terms could have been chosen that 
would lay a stronger claim to our interest or 
that would have a greater wealth of signifi¬ 
cance to humanity than these two that are 
brought into relation by our caption. 

The Bible ! The Book —pre-eminently 
so! Teaching the way of life and warning 
against the way of death ; conveying strength, 
guidance, consolation, peace, when the soul’s 
needs cry out for them; pointing the way 
through the valley of the shadow, and illu¬ 
mining the hills of the farther side with the 
sunlight of immortality— 

“ the volume that displays 
The mystery, the life which cannot die.” 

It is a volume that is well worthy of the 
large share of the world’s thought that has 
been given it in the past, that is to be given it 
in the future. 

( 183 ) 


184 Studies in Religious Nurture . 


The child ! Who does not feel like apply¬ 
ing to the child-mind, and in an “ all the more 
so” manner, these lines of Wordsworth on 
contemplating the adult mind ?— 

“Not chaos, not 

The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, 

Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out 
By help of dreams—can breed such fear and awe 
As fall upon us often when we look 
Into our minds—into the mind of man.” 

Who does not agree with Dr. Hall, who has 
done so much for the child, inspiring men and 
women in secular and in religious education to 
put the child in their midst, and to do this in 
an intelligent and a real way ? Who does not 
agree with him when he says: 

“ There is one thing in nature, and one 
alone, fit to inspire all true men and women 
with more awe and reverence than Kant's 
starry heavens—the soul and body of the 
/ child”? 

To be unable to sympathize with these 
sentiments is to confess that the possibilities 
of the child and our responsibilities because 
of them have not been duly reflected upon. 


Studies in Religious Nurture . . 185 

The child summates, if he does not recapit¬ 
ulate, the race’s past conditions, the race’s de¬ 
velopment to higher planes. He conditions 
this development by means of the laws divinely 
written in his nature and awaiting the work 
of the patient, prayerful, conscientious de¬ 
cipherer. 

Oh, child ! product of the past and prophecy 
of the future, organizer of society and bringer 
of unselfishness into many hearts that other¬ 
wise would never have thrilled with this 
Christlike emotion, reveal to us the laws of 
thy nature, that we may know how to treat 
thee the better! 

Though not forgetful of Mr. Fernald’s 
stricture on the use of the term “ the child,” 
we continue to use the term, believing that 
there is no need of special coaching on the use 
of a general term. 

What, in our study of the problem of the 
Bible and the child, is the relative importance 
of these two terms of surpassing interest ? On 
our determination of this element the solution 
of the problem largely turns. Our course 
of procedure is, consciously or unconsciously, 


186 Studies in Religious Nurticre. 

conditioned by our answer to this question of 
the relative importance of the two terms and 
the realities for which they stand. The 
answer to this question has, in a large meas¬ 
ure, given us present and past Bible systems ; 
and into the arrangement of future courses 
must the answer to this question go as one of 
the elements, if not the element, of primal im¬ 
portance. 

Is the Bible an end in itself, given without 
regard for the child, for humanity and its 
needs ? Is it a book that is to be studied and 
committed, for the studying and committing 
of which special blessings are received as a 
“ reward of merit ”—or this failing, a red or a 
blue ticket is given ? Is it a book whose con¬ 
tents children must learn “ by heart,” simply 
because it is the Bible they are memorizing ? 
So highly do some esteem this precious book 
that they fall into a crude idolatry—an idol¬ 
atry that may be, that is, fraught with dire 
consequences. Dangerous, indeed, is this 
Bibliolatry, if it leads to a wrong treatment 
of the child. 

There are others who, though they rever- 


Studies in Religious Nurture, 187 

ence the Bible and yield obedience to its pre¬ 
cepts, follow its directings and draw from its 
never-failing sources help for their daily ex¬ 
periences, nevertheless view the Bible as a 
means to the accomplishing of a supreme 
end, that of the moral and religious de¬ 
velopment of God’s children. When these 
read: 

“ Thy Word have I hid in my heart that 
I might not sin against Thee.” 

“ The law was a schoolmaster to lead us 
unto Christ.” 

“ Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse 
his way? By taking heed thereto accord¬ 
ing to Thy Word,” 

they see in the Word evidence of the fact 
that the Bible is a book to be used by man, 
for man’s good, help, direction, correction, in¬ 
struction. They say that, if it is thus to be 
used as there is need for it in adult life, the 
same principle can be employed with refer¬ 
ence to child-life. Inasmuch as man’s need, 
conscious and self-seen, determines the use he 
makes of the Bible, these say, they see no 
reason why the child’s needs, carefully studied, 


188 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

should not determine the employment of the 
Bible in his religious training. 

This is equivalent to saying that the child 
is the more fundamental of the two terms em¬ 
ployed in our caption. The laws of his being, 
if such exist, should be regarded in teaching 
him, in our solution of the problem of the 
Bible and the child. 

If such laws exist, did we say? This is 
conceded now. 

ct I am firmly convinced,” writes Froebel in 
his letters, “ that all the phenomena of the 
child-world, those that delight us, as well as 
those that grieve, depend upon fixed laws, as 
definite as those of the cosmos, the planetary 
system, and the operations of nature. And it 
is possible, therefore, to discover them and ex¬ 
amine them.” 

Dr. Oppenheim says of the laws of the 
child’s development: 

“. . . they act just as steadily and ruth¬ 
lessly as the laws of gravitation, of the con¬ 
servation of energy.” 

Such laws of child-nature are now thought 
to exist. If they exist , they are laws of God'' s 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 189 

ordaining , and as such they have a right to 
be considered, as much so as has the Bible, a 
written revelation of God to men. 

The child may therefore be said to be fun¬ 
damental in the problem that is before us; 
and the Bible, to be a means to be used in our 
efforts to secure the moral and religious devel¬ 
opment of the child. Its material is to be 
used as the needs of the child may demand, and 
not as an unintelligent regard for the Bible’s 
sacredness, together with a failure to compre¬ 
hend child-nature and its needs, may dictate. 

Granting, then, that the Bible is to be 
the means employed in an effort to secure 
the growth of the child’s moral and religious 
nature, and that the more fundamental factor 
is the child, the laws of whose development 
are to direct us in our effort to solve the 
problem of the Bible and the child, how shall 
we know these laws of growth ? 

Shall we do, as has been done so exclusively 
in the past, and as is done so largely by many 
in the present—study the stream of adult con¬ 
sciousness, fringed by memories of childhood 
days, and, resting on the wholly gratuitous 


190 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

assumption that the stream of child-conscious¬ 
ness flows in a similar way and is fed by the 
same tributaries, conclude that the child is to 
be treated as an adult of limited “strength, 
knowledge, and experience ” ? Is the differ¬ 
ence thus one of degree, merely, and not 
one of kind? 

If we so do, the question of the Bible and 
the child is merely a matter of toning down 
any part of the Bible so as to bring it within 
the realm of the child’s limitations of 
“strength, knowledge, and experience.” We 
are familiar with the results of this toning 
down process, leading, as it does, to strained 
and forced presentations of portions of the 
Word. 

We are too apt to treat the child as if he 
were really, veritably, a “ little man,” or if we 
do not regard him as having attained this 
manly height, we so treat him as to “ make a 
man of him, Mr. Dombey.” We do this, as if 
long years ago Dickens had not struck this 
idea a stinging, stunning blow, hard enough 
to have killed an ordinary fallacy, when he 
made Paul Dombey look up into the face of 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 191 

the learned (sic) head-master and say, - Please, 
sir, I’d rather be a child.” The English 
language could contain no stronger plea than 
this against this “ little-man,” or “make-a- 
man-of-him ” theory. 

Or shall we ignore this deductive process, 
whose basis is adult life and activity and 
needs, and resort to a direct study of the 
child himself, hoping thus to have unveiled 
to us the laws for which we are searching, 
and from which, when found, we hope for 
guidance and direction ? 

This effort characterizes the thought of the 
educational world to-day. This study of the 
child, at times largely intuitive and hastily 
made, has conditioned nearly every advance 
step made in the evolution of educational 
ideas and ideals. Why, then, may we not 
venture to purposely and consciously employ 
the same principle in our effort to reach 
higher planes of procedure as teachers inter¬ 
ested in the culture of the moral and religious 
side of child-life? 

Fortunately for such teachers as are con¬ 
cerned in this problem of the correlation of 


192 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

the Bible and the child, or in the problem of 
a proper Bible course for children, the child 
has been studied from many and varying 
points of view. Many of these studies can 
legitimately be made to contribute to this 
problem, and to others as well, with which 
the Bible School has to deal. 

As a result of these studies certain things 
have been made sufficiently probable to be re¬ 
lied upon in arranging a child’s curriculum. 
And, inasmuch as an attempt to apply these 
principles cannot easily result in anything 
worse than that which is at present offered 
the children of the Bible School, there is no 
danger connected with an experiment in the 
application of these principles. 

One of the things that have been made 
highly probable is the statement that children 
are not little men and women . They are 
children, and to be treated wisely they are to 
be treated in the light of their own natures 
rather than in the light of adult natures. 
This fact—for such we believe it to be—is at 
once available, and leads us to suspect the wis¬ 
dom of offering to children the same Bible 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 193 

material as is given to adults. This fact 
makes us ready to accept the statement that 
“ lessons favorable to the adult student are 
not necessarily useful for the child. There is 
no known law of education by which a series 
of lessons can be selected from the Book of 
Psalms, or the prophecies of Isaiah or Jere¬ 
miah, which can be equally useful in all 
grades of a Church School.” 

Closely connected with this fact of a 
child’s differing from the adult, growing out 
of and complementing it, is the fact that there 
are in the life of the child stages of growth, 
physical, intellectual, and moral and religious, 
that are, to a greater or less degree, distinct 
from one another, and of which each is dis¬ 
tinct from the adult stage. Each of these 
stages has its predominating characteristics, 
its own needs, and is entitled to special con¬ 
sideration at the hands of those who try to 
help the child realize his highest possible self. 

Secular educational efforts that are worthy 
of consideration recognize this second fact 
and are attempting to apply it in the actual 
work of the schools. 


13 


194 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

This principle as applied in secular educa¬ 
tion leads to an attempted adaptation of dif¬ 
ferent material to these several stages of the 
child’s development rather than to an at¬ 
tempted adaptation of the same material to all 
stages. Why should not the same principle 
lead to a similar tentative effort on the part of 
those concerned in the problem of the Bible 
and the child? To say why it should not is 
more difficult, if at all possible, than it is to 
say why it does not lead to such an adapta¬ 
tion. 

This supposedly new idea encounters at 
once the inertia of humanity, manifested in 
the belief that for the purpose of supplying 
the needs of children any part of the Bible is 
as good as any other part. It is reasoned that 
“all Scripture is profitable ... for instruc¬ 
tion in righteousness,” and that because this 
is true every part of Scripture is just as profit¬ 
able at any stage of life as is any other part, 
though it is added : 

“ Any Bible teacher worthy of the name 
can, by the aid of the Holy Spirit , adapt 
these lessons TO THE NEEDS OF THE CLASS.” 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 


T 95 

And in the very argument we have granted to 
us the validity of the principle opposed. 

This principle of adaptation of material, 
of material that is already adapted to the 
needs of the several ages, is, like many other 
“ new ideas" not entirely new. The He¬ 
brews did not allow the reading of the Book 
of Ezekiel by any person under thirty years 
of age. And what is the meaning of the fol¬ 
lowing ? 

“As newborn babes desire the sincere 
milk of the word, that ye may grow there¬ 
by.”—I Peter ii. 2. 

“ I have fed you with milk and not with 
meat, for hitherto ye were not able to bear 
it.”—I Cor. iii. 2. 

“ . . . and are become such as have need 
of milk and not of strong meat. . . .” 

“But strong meat belongeth to them that 
are of full age, even those who by reason of 
use have their senses exercised to discern 
both good and evil.”—Heb. v., part of 12, 
and 14 entire. 

What have we here if there is not a recog¬ 
nition of the fact that some parts of the Word 


196 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

are more suitable than others for certain stages 
in life? 

And the principle has also found exponents 
in the early age of the Church. Gregory of 
Nazianzen argued for a selection of material 
suitable for different ages of children. 

A third principle is one that, though 
strongly probable, some may not care to ac¬ 
cept. It is that, in the choice of material 
suited to these several stages, we are safe if 
we follow the lead of the children’s interests. 
Some are afraid of this principle. But when 
one or two limitations are made to it, it seems 
to be eminently safe. It is generally recog¬ 
nized by secular workers that it is the part of 
wisdom to employ, or to appeal to, these in¬ 
terests in dealing with the child. 

“ The day schools have long since found 
out that the success of their instruction de¬ 
pends in large measure upon the selection 
of the subject-matter and the methods of 
its presentation in accordance with the 
psychological laws of the children’s interest 
and growth,” 

says Dr. DeGarmo, with nothing to show us 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 197 

that he uses “ interest ” in the technical sense 
of a Herbartian ; for his use of the plural, 
“ interests,” just a little farther on, leads us to 
believe that he here has in mind something 
different from the generated or induced inter¬ 
est so much written about by his school of 
educational thought. 

“It is evident,” says Mr. Dawson, in his 
article on Children’s Interests in the Bible, 
“ that the principle of interest has the sanction 
of scientific research and that it is rapidly be¬ 
coming a standard for estimating the material 
of instruction.” He says this after referring 
to seventeen distinct recent studies of chil¬ 
dren’s interests, the studies having appeared 
in eleven of the leading educational maga¬ 
zines. He continues: 

“ I see no reason why the same principle 
should not be recognized in shaping the 
curriculum of religious education.” 

Mr. Dawson’s study shows that children are 
more interested in certain Bible material at 
one age than at another, and that each age 
has its decided preference. A study has been 
made by the Child Study Department of the 


198 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

Primary and Junior Council of the Pennsyl¬ 
vania State Sabbath School Association that 
in a manner corroborates Mr. Dawson’s results. 
What shall we do with the facts? 1 

The law of suggestibility on the part of 
children serves as an additional helper in the 
choice of material. The fact that so many 
children yield to a negative suggestion, as well 
as the fact that all young children are suscepti¬ 
ble to the influence of suggestion as it lurks in 
a story, in an example lived before the child, 
must be held in mind alike when selecting 
the material for and when teaching it to chil¬ 
dren. 

There are some additional facts that in a 
more extended discussion would call for con¬ 
sideration. The vagueness of children’s ideas, 
together with the desire to hear a story 
again, or one similar to it (?); their preference 
for the concrete, the tangible, and their lack 
of interest in that which is otherwise; the 
expressive phase of child-nature demanding 
to a large degree such material as can be ap¬ 
plied by children in their daily life, or such 
1 See Study on Children’s Interests in the Bible, page 151. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 


199 


as will be recalled to their minds by their con¬ 
tact with their natural or social environ¬ 
ment ; the fundamental principle of acquisi¬ 
tion, that of apperception, is to be recog¬ 
nized, but not pushed to an absurdity, as is 
often done with many good educational prin¬ 
ciples —all these can be made to contribute 
to the desired solution of the problem of the 
Bible and the child. And it is in the light of 
these principles that, it seems reasonable to 
say, the correlation of the Bible and the 
child must be worked out. 

Could we be given a system of lessons so 
presenting the material as to do violence to 
none of these principles, that system of les¬ 
sons would be worthy of our confidence and 
would merit at our hands a careful test in our 
actual class-room work. Such a system 
would, it seems, be very much superior to a 
system that does not make the child and the 
laws of his development the fundamental and 
vitalizing principle of its arrangement. 








XII. 

AN INTERROGATION OF CHRISTIAN 
EDUCATION. 
















AN INTERROGATION 
OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 


THE INTERROGATION. 

WE wish to ask of Christian Ed¬ 
ucation, as it is organized and 
operative in practice, if it has so 
examined its organization and its 
methods of procedure as to have 
fully satisfied itself that it is not 
self-antagonistic ; that it is not con¬ 
tributing to a growth of certain 
character traits which Christian 
Education in later life must antag¬ 
onize, must try to neutralize—char¬ 
acter traits whose presence in the 
individual or in society effectually 
blocks the fuller coming of the 
kingdom, for which the Master 
taught us to daily pray ; for which 
the world is really, if often uncon¬ 
sciously, yearning. 

(203) 


204 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

No fondness for paradox gives form to this 
interrogation. Its form is necessitated by the 
conditions that exist. 

There is to be seen in the educational world 
a tendency to magnify things of the letter, 
things that are external, incidental, that have 
to do almost exclusively with means and 
methods. So strong is this tendency that 
many seem at times to lose sight of the fact 
that there are things of the spirit—internal, 
fundamental, which look to the end to be at¬ 
tained—that attach themselves to matters of 
education. There are educational things of 
the spirit and there are educational things of 
the letter. Between them there arise antag¬ 
onisms, whereby the literal, the “ prac¬ 
tical ” (so-called) often counteracts or makes 
inoperative the spiritual, the valuable, the 
eternal. 

The species bears the stamp of the genus. 
The same tendency is seen in matters of Chris¬ 
tian education. There is danger of magnify¬ 
ing the importance of organization, of equip¬ 
ment, of curriculum, etc., till the deeper things 
are overlooked. There is danger of so em- 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 205 

phasizing the letter as to overlook, or ignore 
the spirit. 

Thus, there have come to be two concep¬ 
tions of education—two conceptions of re¬ 
ligious education: the one being satisfied 
with the surface, the tangible, the ponderable 
things; the other, not neglecting but duly 
subordinating these things, concerns itself 
with the things that lie below the surface, 
that are intangible, imponderable, the things 
most worth while. 

Christian Education of the latter kind looks 
beyond, back of, over the external marks of 
Christian Education of the former kind, until 
it finds the heart-motive. To this it presents 
its appeal, not so much—and not at all exclu¬ 
sively—by means of direct appeal, exhortation, 
and preaching (save in the church phase of 
Christian Education). It rather so safeguards 
and subordinates its organization and all its 
methods of procedure as to afford occasion 
thereby for the development of such motives 
as are consistent with, the product and the 
sure marks of, love for Jesus Christ—a love 
that shall manifest itself in obedience to the 


206 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

two tables of the second commandment: “Love 
thyself ; thy neighbor as thyself.” Whatever 
else may be done or attempted in the name of 
Christian Education, an effort to develop altru¬ 
ism as the dominant life-motive must not be 
neglected. Though everything else be done, 
failure here marks the failure of education 
that claims to be distinctively Christian! But 
to fail to develop altruism is to develop egoism, 
against which the Church of Christ is com¬ 
missioned to wage a warfare of annihilation. 

The interrogation asks if Christian Edu¬ 
cation may not at times be self-antagonistic. 

The pertinence of this interrogation ap¬ 
pears, in part, when we reflect upon the com¬ 
parative absence of altruism from the motives 
that predominate in society. We see it in the 
commercial and industrial world. The rights 
of millions are trampled upon, while egoism 
battles with egoism, both combatants alike 
indifferent to the absolute needs of the mill¬ 
ions ; recent publications make plain the 
processes whereby many of the vast accumu¬ 
lations of wealth have been made—processes 
that have back of them a disregard for the 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 207 

rights of man, the laws of man, and the laws 
of God ; processes which have entailed suffer¬ 
ing, hardship, and wreckage, financial, moral, 
spiritual, for many. We see it in the polit¬ 
ical world, where the idea of a call to public , 
service has been prostituted, and we have 
instead a seeking for office by methods that 
undermine both public and private morality, 
and that deprive us of representation, save in 
its semblance. Egoism in politics is rapidly 
making a farce of our boasted—but we fear 
too little valued—republico-democratic prin¬ 
ciple of self-government in the interests of the 
common weal. Colonel Parker, the lamented 
educational leader, in vigorous but fully justi¬ 
fied rhetorical interrogation, asks, 

“Is it not true that if we as citizens could 
go to the polls and vote for public servants 
with a complete or reasonable conviction 
that our candidates love their country more 
than they love themselves, we should be 
profoundly happy ? ” 

In connection with this lamentable absence 
of altruism, the pertinence of our interro¬ 
gation still further appears in the fact that, 


208 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

for a long period of years, Christian Education, 
as found in home and school and church and 
in Christian lives, with their potency, has been 
operative, privileged the while to counteract 
all this; even commissioned to do so. Men 
who are captains of sociologically iniquitous 
industries, men who are serving self and not 
the common good, who are debauching man¬ 
hood, and who know no moral restrictions to 
the reaching of their ambitions, these men, 
many if not all of them, have at some time 
been in touch with Christian Education, and 
have come away with egoism abnormally de¬ 
veloped. Many of them are professing Chris¬ 
tians. 

Has Christian Education ever been so or¬ 
ganized as to have contributed to this result ? 
Is it in any respect and at any place so organ¬ 
ized as to be a probable contributor to this re¬ 
sult to-day ? Must not the answer be an affir¬ 
mative one? If so, the pertinency of the in¬ 
terrogation is apparent. 

This affirmative answer has reference to 
Christian Education in its several phases, as it 
is found in some homes, in some schools, in 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 209 

some Bible Schools. In some schools we find 
prizes, honors, class standings, commencement 
distinctions, etc., extensively employed as in¬ 
centives to effort or to good behavior. Cata¬ 
logues announce them, teachers refer to them, 
pupils talk of them, wish for them, and some 
work for them—honestly or otherwise (often 
otherwise). In the homes we hear these 
things spoken of, comparisons of children 
made, winners lauded—an atmosphere, in fact, 
that leaves no room to doubt the things ex¬ 
pected of the children by the homes. Nor is 
the Bible School willing to be outdone. With 
its rewards and prizes and tickets, with its 
class rivalries for attendance or contribution 
banners, with its devices whereby the child 
may be induced to part with his money, and 
thus swell the school or church board treasury, 
the Bible School is a close second, if not the 
victor in the mad race away from the real and 
vital interests of the child. 

The system of extraneous rewards and in¬ 
ducements in educational work is of English 
university origin, and did not originate with 
the Bible School, as has been claimed by 


14 


2io Studies in Religious Nurture. 

some. From the same source, comes the most 
famous argument in the system’s favor. An 
outline of this argument is presented as the 
basis of an examination of the system’s reason 
for being: 

Proposition i. Intellectual improvement 
depends on what one does for himself. 

Proposition 2. This doing for one’s self is 
for a long time painful. The great problem 
of education is to induce a pupil to endure this 
pain until he reaches a pleasurable stage. 

Proposition j. A stimulus is necessary for 
a season to counteract the pain of exertion, 
“ to induce the pupil to endure,” etc. 

Proposition 4. Emulation and love of honor 
constitute the appropriate stimulus in educa¬ 
tion. 

The first proposition, that intellectual de¬ 
velopment depends on what one does for him¬ 
self, asserts an educational commonplace, rec¬ 
ognized and used by all skillful teachers. 

But this proposition, fundamental to the 
argument, contains a fallacy that reigns almost 
supreme in educational circles. The pre-emi¬ 
nence given to the intellect and its develop- 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 211 

ment has made possible many a practice that 
otherwise would meet with peremptory chal¬ 
lenge, at times on ethical grounds. As if 
there were no other function of mind, as if 
society to-day more needs intellectual culture 
than it needs a development of Christian 
morality, largely a matter of the heart and 
will, we have concerned ourselves with intel¬ 
lectual culture to the serious neglect of heart 
and will, at times to the negative development 
of these phases of life; for it is possible for 
u the intellect to grow wise while the heart 
grows wicked,” as Horace Mann contends. 

The second proposition, asserting that this 
self-effort is painful for awhile and then be¬ 
comes pleasurable is, so far as the painful 
feature is concerned, an assertion of what has 
been and of what often is the case, rather than 
an assertion of what could be and of what 
should be the case. This proposition as an 
assertion of what should be the accompani¬ 
ment of intellectual activity is psychologically 
antiquated. The later psychology contends 
that— 

“ While the love of knowledge takes its 


212 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

rise in a painful feeling, the sense of igno¬ 
rance or of perplexity, it is greatly reinforced 
by the pleasurable feelmgs which accompany 
the attainment of knowledge. ”— Sully. 
Intellectual exertion not carried to the point 
of fatigue is pleasant, if healthful, teaches the 
same authority. “ The fact is,” writes Dr. 
Search, “only our methods of approach are 
distasteful—truth is always attractive. The 
rich realm of learning is full of pure delight.” 1 
Proposition three asserts the need of a stim¬ 
ulus (extraneous is taken for granted) to coun¬ 
teract the pain of exertion. But any little 
pain, strain, sense of obstacles that might ac¬ 
company a quest of truth, would be naturally 
counteracted by the hope of success, by the 
prevision of the truth as the learner draws 
consciously nearer and nearer to it, by the 
emotional concomitant of the intellectual ex¬ 
ertion, and by the joy of conquest of truth, not 
alone at the end of the process, but as each 
successive partial conquest is achieved. Why, 
then, an extraneous stimulus ? 

• Proposition four makes of emulation and 
1 “Educational Review,” Eeb., 1896, page 141. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 213 

love of honor the appropriate stimulus in edu¬ 
cation. No one has ever denied to emulation 
the right to be ranked as a stimulus. It is a 
potent one. This fact has never been better un¬ 
derstood than by the Jesuits, the past masters 
in the use of the stimulus. Fitting stimulus it 
is for them, with their principle of ignored in¬ 
strumentalities, in view of the importance of 
the end. If our wish is to set a few to intense 
effort to reach, each before the other, an arti¬ 
ficial goal—a goal which, when reached, brings 
to the successful competitor peculiar temp¬ 
tations of a self-satisfying, self-glorifying kind ; 
a goal which at best proclaims that the winner 
has but outstripped another, regardless of how 
it was done, regardless of whether or not he 
has done his best—if this is our wish, we shall 
find in emulation the shortest way to the 
attainment of that wish. Yes, emulation is a 
stimulus; but it is a stimulus that, in the 
sense in which it is here employed, has found 
no sanction in the world's greatest text-book on 
Education—the Bible. 

This argument under consideration contains 
a fallacy that finds no explicit statement in 


214 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

connection with the several propositions. If 
explicitly stated it would read : 

“During the painful stages use a power¬ 
ful stimulus, extraneous, until the pleasur¬ 
able stages are reached, when the stimulus 
will no longer be necessary, being replaced 
by the pleasure incident on the efforts put 
forth.” 

The error of dissociating the pleasure and 
pain in the process of acquiring knowledge we 
have seen. The two chase each other through 
the various stages of acquisition. But, for the 
sake of argument, grant the dissociation con¬ 
tended for by the illustrious author of this de¬ 
fense of the system of extraneous stimulation. 
The fallacy persists. The stimulus used dur¬ 
ing the assumed painful stage will not be 
easily dispossessed. To contend that it will 
be is to encounter two stubborn facts. The 
first of these is the law of habituation of 
motive , asserting that the longer one works 
under the stimulus of a given motive, the 
less likely he is to be swayed by any other 
motive that might try to displace the one 
to which he has become habituated. The 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 215 

second fact is that of the refutation of the 
fallacy by experience with extraneous stim¬ 
ulation. Where has it been found that the 
stimulus can be removed? It is often ap¬ 
plied in the home. Does the secular school 
remove it, the Bible School, the high school, 
the college, the university? What a long- 
drawn-out, painful period must be passed 
through ! How far off the pleasurable stage ! 
The experience of Mr. Lawrence in his Bible 
School is pertinent. The Robert Raikes di¬ 
ploma, described as “ a beautiful lithographed 
diploma, 14 by 17 inches, designed by the 
author some twenty years ago,” is given for 
a year of perfect record. For each of six suc¬ 
ceeding years a seal is given until the diploma 
represents seven years of perfect record. And 
then the thing of present interest. We quote : 

“ Hundreds of members having earned and 
received the Robert Raikes diploma, with all 
its seals, made it necessary to inaugurate 
something else, lest they lose their interest . 
We consequently introduced what is known 
as the Robert Raikes Alumni Diploma. . . . 
This is much larger and handsomer than 


216 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

the Robert Raikes diploma, being 19 x 24 
inches in size, beautifully lithographed in 
four colors upon heavy bond paper.” 1 
Having thus been led through the painful 
stage of Bible School work, the pupil is 
ready to go to Bible School for the pleasure 
there is in it. But no, some pain still lingers. 
The alumni diploma provides for twelve more 
annual seals, each required (reasoning from 
the author’s reason for the existence of the 
alumni diploma), “ Rest they lose their in¬ 
terest.” 

Unconvinced by the argument, unswayed 
by the name of its distinguished author, we 
continue to press our interrogation of Chris¬ 
tian Education; and in pressing it, we bring 
against the system of extraneous reward, in¬ 
centive, stimulus, whether it is employed by 
church or school or home, taking the form 
of emulation and of competition as it unavoid¬ 
ably does, the following accusations : 

We accuse the system of laying on the 
majority of those under its sway additional 
and unnecessary burdens. What of stimu- 
1 “ How to Conduct a Sunday School,” pages 163, 164. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 217 

lation is to be gotten from the fact that one 
helps to form the dull background whereby 
the brightness of the foreground may be made 
apparent ? Stimulus ! what a mockery the 
word to a pupil of ordinary power, of sluggish 
mental process! The consciousness of one’s 
deficiency is not often classed as an instru¬ 
ment of stimulation. 

We accuse the system of contributing, in 
many instances, to an over-pressure in edu¬ 
cation that undermines health, and robs so¬ 
ciety of some of its potentially most useful 
members. Over-pressure’s victims are to be 
found at all ages of school life. Dr. Talbot, 
in his work on “ Degeneracy,” says : 

“ In children, emotional conditions, school 
strain, rivalry between classmates, are as 
liable to produce neurasthenia as are the 
struggles for existence in later life.” 
Elsewhere, the same author says : 

“It is the spirit of emulation, with its 
attendant alternation of worry and hope, 
that causes so many of the acquired nerv¬ 
ous disorders of the adult, and which obvi¬ 
ously is much more potent with children .” 


218 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

When we recall in this connection Professor 
Lombroso’s contention, that, unlike the lower 
organisms, the human beings most fit to sur¬ 
vive and to bless humanity are the ones that 
are most likely to be injured, we see that 
society’s loss is much more than a matter of 
mere numbers. Literature has seen the dan¬ 
ger. Dickens, in “ Dombey and Son,” has 
given us a classic on over-pressure. And you 
will easily locate the following paragraph from 
a lamented author: 

u It was a low-roofed room, with a box 
bed and some pieces of humble furniture, 
fit only for a laboring man. [We regret the 
implication of this phrase.] But the choice 
treasures of Greece and Rome lay on the 
table, and on the shelf beside the bed coU 
lege prizes and medals , while everywhere 
were the roses he loved. His peasant 
mother stood beside the body of her scholar 
son.” 

It is between the lines we read the accu¬ 
sation against educational over-pressure oper¬ 
ating through emulation. One such life of 
promise as was that of u Geordie Hoo ” is too 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 219 

much of a social loss. In 1899, at the mid¬ 
summer distribution of prizes by the Uni¬ 
versity of London, Dr. Alexander Hill was 
the speaker. He took as his text, the system 
of offering rewards for scholarship, and se¬ 
verely arraigned it. The first contention 
in his arraignment was that the system “ in¬ 
creases temptation to over-work.” His audi¬ 
ence thought him facetious, and laughed, at 
first, at his contention. They ended by cheer¬ 
ing his utterances. 

We accuse the system of making the intel¬ 
lectual the supreme thing in life, and of de¬ 
veloping it, at times, at the expense of the 
emotional and volitional functions of life. 
This accusation cannot be substantiated so 
far as the theory of education goes. We 
point to the actual practices for substantiation 
of it. 

We accuse the system of displacing a natu¬ 
ral incentive to effort by an artificial one, 
thus deadening real interest in the subject 
for its own sake, for the sake of its life- 
serviceability. There is a danger that the 
one thus stimulated artificially may not have 


220 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

a real and sincere interest in life, that his con¬ 
cern may be with life’s superficial things, be¬ 
cause of which he shall miss the true mean¬ 
ing and the true joy of life. 

We accuse the system of placing before stu¬ 
dents a temptation to resort to unfair means, 
and we aver from observation and from hearsay, 
what few, if any, educational workers do not 
know to be a fact, that many students yield to 
the temptation and resort to unfair means, im¬ 
pelled thereto by the hope of surpassing others, 
or of making a more creditable personal show¬ 
ing. Are these facts things to which we dare be 
indifferent ? Shall we set up a special standard 
of educational ethics by which indulgences are 
granted for all sorts of wrong whilst one is in 
school or college ? What shall we say of the 
synodically-aided student for the ministry, 
who with dark lantern and a tried companion, 
seeks (and finds and uses) the matter for the 
Greek examination of the following morning ? 
What shall we say of the ingenuity of decep¬ 
tion, of acted falsehood, by which coveted 
standing and rank and distinction are sought 
for, and often obtained, without the instalment 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 221 

payments of honest efforts through the term ? 
Can it be that the system is all right and the 
students all wrong? Does the blame rest 
properly and solely upon the students in their 
total depravity ? Or shall we enlarge our 
conception of depravity so as to include in it 
the system that tempts, as well as the students 
who yield to the temptation? Homes often 
help along the evil we are deploring. Many 
a child carries to school work his parents have 
done, and for which he is credited. With 
such credits he wins place and class and 
school distinction. We have heard of a lit¬ 
erary parent, a clergyman, who corrected his 
son’s essays before the essays were presented 
for the criticisms and the credits of the Pro¬ 
fessor of English. What shall we say of a 
system that thus tempts young people and 
parents to close their eyes to delicate ethical 
distinctions? How shamefully unequal the 
competition between the child who has no 
one at home able to do his work for him, and 
the cultured parent of blunted ethical sense, 
who enters the competition by means of a 
child used as a proxy ! 


22 2 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

We accuse the system of cultivating egoism 
and ant-altruism, the motives with which 
Christian education must contend so vigorously 
and with so little progress toward final con¬ 
quest ; the motives which grievously afflict 
society and rob the individual of the joy that 
comes from the indwelling of altruism, of the 
Christ motive. If the system’s appeals are at 
all responded to, the responses, one by one, con¬ 
tribute to the growth of the anti-social motives, 
each response leaving the student more self- 
centered than he was before responding. What 
might be could we rid ourselves of the system 
so almost universally in vogue is a matter of 
inference. Yet to those who believe in altru¬ 
ism as the supreme motive of life, as the crux 
of the Master’s social teachings, how thrilling 
the prospect of an absence of this system ! 
There seems to be a time when the adolescent 
is peculiarly open to the cultivation of altru¬ 
ism, when he thrills with interest in others and 
when the motive might be fixed for life. But 
at this time he is subjected to the artificial 
system and is made to be self-considering. By 
the laws of imitation, of suggestion, of the 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 223 

social atmosphere, of the sanction of those 
looked up to as guides and leaders and friends, 
he is led, beguiled, driven into self-consider¬ 
ing channels, which flow not through fields of 
altruism. 

We accuse the system of presenting to the 
young and immature false ideals of life, giving 
them distorted and grotesque notions of suc¬ 
cess, a false perspective of life’s opportunities 
and duties. The law of the potency of ideals 
holds as well for false and negative ideals as 
for true and positive ones, with this difference 
—the negative ones actualize themselves in 
conjunction with the moral gravitation of the 
race, and therefore along the lines of least re¬ 
sistance and easily; the positive ones must 
counteract this downward gravity-pull, and 
therefore actualize themselves with difficulty. 
If we give erroneous ideals we must expect 
them to bring forth their corresponding life 
activities and to persist with a baffling obsti¬ 
nacy even when one is awakened to their 
negative character. Nor is this all. These 
errors of life attitude, of ideal, of dominant 
motive, are strangely self-perpetuative. They 


224 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

go out into homes and schools and church, 
there to multiply their kind. 

We accuse the system of making necessary 
many a life-long battle with the lower in one’s 
self after the vision of the higher has been 
given to him, and of making more difficult 
the Holy Spirit’s work of sanctification in a 
life that has in earlier years been habituated to 
the system’s motive. 

If one holds the biologic conception of men¬ 
tal development and believes with L,owell 
that— 

“ From the lower to the higher next, 

Not to the highest is nature’s text,” 

if one believes with him in the analogy of the 
tadpole’s tail, to such we accuse the system, con¬ 
tending that it interferes with this very pro¬ 
cess. The interference is seen, not as is so 
often the case, in the cutting off of the tail 
in a vain effort to hurry the development of 
the legs. It reverses the order, preventing the 
development of the legs by making the tail a 
permanent feature. The period of selfishness, 
out of which and by means of which, on this 
theory, there should be a growth into the 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 225 

weaker altruism and then into the higher and 
higher stages of it, is so prolonged and the de¬ 
velopment of selfishness is so abnormal, that 
no energy is left for altruism ; it remains but 
rudimentary, to tell of what should have been. 

There are in recent educational literature 
two apparent defenses of the system under 
consideration; one by Dr. Gordy, in his 
“ Briefer Elementary Education,” the other 
by Prof. Griggs, in his “ Moral Education.” If 
these could be shown to be sane defenses of 
the system in the intense form in which it is 
employed, they could be replied to by the fact 
that neither author is interested, professedly, 
in education that is marked off as distinctively 
Christian. 

But these are not defenses of the system 
arraigned. 

Dr. Gordy’s defense of emulation is a de¬ 
fense of emulation of so mild a kind that it 
differs by but very little from imitation. He 
gives to emulation as an emotional coloring 
the feeling of stress because of inferiority. 
He grants that this dislike of inferiority may 
easily develop into a desire for superiority, and 


15 


226 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

that the self-regarding character of emulation 
very clearly allies it with the combative, aggres¬ 
sive tendency of a child. He sees the dangers. 
When we read— 

“ Deal with the child in such a way that 
he will wish not to emulate unworthy ex¬ 
amples,” 

we cannot by predetermined effort find even 
between the lines a defense of the system as it 
is operative in many places under the sanc¬ 
tion of Christian Education. 

But when Prof. Griggs says “even prizes 
may have a place,” and refers to “ the modern 
reaction against their use,” the advocate of the 
system may feel that he has found a standing 
place. He is doomed to disappointment. The 
context adds : 

“ . . . their occasional therapeutic value. 
To have this value they must be given as 
rarely and as carefully as a physician gives 
a physical stimulant, and we must never 
let them be substituted for the real nourish¬ 
ment of the moral life. Moreover, their 
use is helpful, not when given for superior 
natural endowments, but when they are 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 227 


used to stimulate sincere effort. With these 
restrictions, it is possible to make them a 
temporarily helpful if an altogether subordi¬ 
nate element in furthering moral growth.’ 
The validity of the analogy between the phy¬ 
sician and the one entrusted with the moral 
culture of a child may be open to objections. 
But granting the significance attached to it by 
Prof. Griggs, the system is condemned. The 
restrictions demanded do not exist in practice, 
would take from the system all that now char¬ 
acterizes it, and would require a much higher 
degree of professional efficiency than is re¬ 
quired in the employment of the existent 
system. 

As if by way of salving a hurt conscience, 
Christian Education at times bewails the con¬ 
dition of things as they are in society to-day 
and interests itself in a remedy. This interest 
not infrequently runs in the channel of criti¬ 
cism of the public school and exhausts itself 
in an effort to have the Bible read and prayer 
offered in the school. 

This procedure is too fallacious to be an 
answer to the interrogation we are making. 


228 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

It is fallacious in that it throws the burden 
on the public school, wherein justice it should 
rest most lightly. The public school is but 
one of several factors operating to bring about 
social conditions. It is just as illogical for the 
other factors to accuse the public school of 
failure and of recreancy to high duty and 
privilege as it would be for the public school 
to so accuse the other factors; even more so. 
For the public school is, in large measure, a 
product of the other factors. For home and 
church to accuse the public school is for them 
to accuse themselves. Some of the most bane¬ 
ful features of the public school to-day exist 
because of the attitude of the community, of 
the demands made by the homes. The public 
school to-day sees visions whose materializa¬ 
tion will be long deferred because of the com¬ 
munity life, of business standards, of political 
ideals and practices—yes, and because of a 
heritage of ideals and of traditions passed 
down to it by institutions existing as expo¬ 
nents of Christian Education. 

There is danger of being satisfied with the 
formal. The reading of the Bible in the 



Studies in Religious Nurture . 229 

schools may or may not be the blessing we 
wish. Certain it is that it is possible by ex¬ 
ample to give the lie to precept, by personality 
to beget contempt for precept. There is some¬ 
thing better than the legal, compulsory use of 
the Bible, so apt to be perfunctory. This bet¬ 
ter thing is the legal privilege to use the Bible, 
and the selection of such teachers as will, out 
of their love for the Bible, their appreciation 
of its value, choose to use it. More than the 
Bible in the schools is there need of the 
embodiment of its teachings in the lives of 
those in charge of education. Let us not de¬ 
ceive ourselves with externals, with the letter. 
One can conceive of schools exerting a posi¬ 
tive moral and religious influence though de¬ 
nied the privilege of using the Bible. Like¬ 
wise is it possible to conceive of schools using 
the Bible and yet exerting an influence that 
makes not for righteousness. 

Are we disposed to ask why this system, 
existing by the sanction of Christian Edu¬ 
cation, has been allowed to exist, and does 
now exist? We shall find the answer in 
large part in the assertion that the system 


230 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

has so securely intrenched itself because it 
moves along the line of least resistance, fixing 
its attention on things more easily attainable, 
and choosing the easiest way possible of at¬ 
taining unto them ; more or less disregarding 
all other considerations. 

It is much easier for a mother wishing to 
have a child take disagreeable medicine, to 
achieve the result by saying, “ If you do not 
take it I will give it to your brother John,” 1 
than to have previously developed the habit of 
doing things that ought to be done. It is a 
much easier thing to pay pupils for effort, for 
behavior of a proper kind, than it is to secure . 
effort and behavior through previous develop¬ 
ment. It may be the easiest way of having 
Bible verses stored in the minds of children to 
resort to a commercial transaction in card¬ 
board, red, yellow, and blue, redeemable later 
on. But Mr. Riley’s lines,— 

“ K’en these tickets, blue and red, 

For the Bible verses said— 

Such as these His memory kept,— 

Jesus wept.” 


1 Horace Mann gives the instance. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 231 

show that the motive may be sordid, and the 
end “ the tickets blue and red.” Mr. Clemens, 
in “Tom Sawyer,” points out another possi¬ 
bility of the Bible School ticket, that of 
speculation. A picture of a denominational 
“ patron saint,” given for a stipulated contri¬ 
bution, may increase the amount of money a 
missionary board will receive, but we question 
whether such methods will at all contribute 
to the development of the benevolent spirit in 
the next generation of church members. (A 
spirit from an over-development of which the 
Church does not suffer at the present time.) 

There can be no question of the simplifi¬ 
cation of class-room processes where the sys¬ 
tem of extraneous stimulus, in some one or 
more of its various forms, prevails. But there 
are some other things that exist along with this 
simplification that raise a serious question as 
to its desirability, so far as the pupils’ good is 
concerned. 

The system exists largely by virtue of its 
non-resistance, as well as by the sanction that 
it has from hoary traditions. 

And yet, although the system has the sane- 


232' Studies in Religious Nurture. 

tion of hoary and almost universal tradition, 
that sanction is not universal. In all ages 
protest has been made against the system. 

William Cowper, in his “ Review of 
Schools,” arraigned the system in the latter 
part of the eighteenth century. Setting forth 
the defects of the system, he wrote : 

“ But judge where so much evil intervenes, 

The end, though plausible, not worth the means, 
Weigh for a moment classical desert 
Against a heart depraved and temper hurt; 

Hurt, too, perhaps for life ; for early wrong 
Done to the nobler part affects it long ; 

And you are staunch, indeed, in learning’s cause 
If you can crown a discipline, that draws 
Such mischief after it, with much applause.” 

Byron, too, in his “ Thoughts on a College 
Examination,” sees defects in the system, and 
concludes the poem thus : 

“ This much at least I may presume to say, 

The premium can’t exceed the price they pay.” 

Maria Edgeworth had written : 

“Superior knowledge is dearly acquired 

at the price of a malevolent disposition.” 

Young, in earlier times, and Ruskin, in 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 


more recent, have made statements that were 
a criticism of the English system. 

Bacon has seen the danger of this system, 
and has added the weight of his name to an 
antagonism of it. He says : 

“ Men have a foolish manner (both 
parents and schoolmasters and servants) 
in creating and breeding an emulation be¬ 
tween brothers during childhood, which 
many times sorteth to discord when they 
are men, and disturbeth families.” 1 
The attack here is along the line of the 
practical only. But it merits a place for 
Bacon among those of the past who have 
seen clearly upon this vital matter. 

Among the many things for which Horace 
Mann, the apostle of the American public 
school system, stood, was that of antagonism 
to the system under consideration. In a 
lecture given in the first year of his secretary¬ 
ship of the Massachusetts Board of Education, 
he says, speaking of emulation : 

“ I entreat all intelligent men to give to 
this subject a most careful consideration. 

1 Essay on “ Parents and Children.” 


234 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

And let those who use it as a quickener of 
the intellect beware lest it prove a de¬ 
praver of the social affections. ... No 
cruelty to a child can be so great as that 
which barters morals for attainments.” . . * 
“Will there ever be any less of this deadly 
strife for the ostensible signs of precedence, 
in the social and political arena, while the 
germs of emulation are so assiduously cul¬ 
tivated in the schoolroom, the academy, and 
• the college? The pale ambition of men 
ready to sacrifice country and kind for 
self, is only the fire of youthful emulation 
heated to a white heat.” 

We do not wonder that this ardent lover 
of young people, when he took charge of 
Antioch College, forbade the presence of the 
system in connection with the institution, an 
institution which, under Mann’s presidency, 
became the pioneer of six or seven advance 
educational movements. 

Through her journal, we are able to see how 
another American educator of international re¬ 
pute looked upon the system. Maria Mitchell, 
Vassar’s brilliant astronomer, wrote : 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 235 


“ I start for faculty, and we probably 
shall elect what are called ‘ honor girls.’ I 
dread the struggle that is pretty certain to 
come. The whole system is demoralizing 
and foolish. Girls study for prizes and not 
for learning, when 4 honors ’ are at the end. 
The unscholarly motive is wearing. If they 
studied for sound learning, the cheer which 
would come with every day’s gain would be 
health preserving.” 

A present Vassar professor, Tucy M. Sal¬ 
mon, contends for the same principle, assert¬ 
ing: 

“ The practice of giving honors is de¬ 
moralizing, and if it could be eradicated 
from the educational system a long step 
in advance would be taken.” 

In one of the universities of the West, that 
of Indiana, the system is under the ban. We 
quote from the then Vice-President of this uni¬ 
versity : 

“I rather incline to believe with those 
who think that everything in the school 
which excites emulation, everything in the 
way of prizes and honors, all that sort of 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 


thing, from the bottom to the top, does more 
harm than good. Of course, if Colonel 
Parker were here he would say the same 
thing in his great, emphatic way. I am not 
sure of it, but it is true as far as my experi¬ 
ence goes. In our university, for instance, 
we give no honors, we give no grades, we 
give nothing at all but ‘ pass ’ and 4 not 
pass.’ That does not result in the hun¬ 
dreds of students who are there doing just 
enough to pass. They did not come there 
for that. Their attention is turned away 
from the artificial effort for marks , to the 
work they are there to doT 1 2 
Let us hear how Colonel Parker says the 
same thing 44 in his emphatic way ” : 

“Bad as corporal punishment has been 
and is, the substitution of a system of re¬ 
wards is infinitely worse. Fear of punish¬ 
ment is bad enough, but the systematic 
development of selfishness is damnable ! ” 

1 W. L. Bryan, in Chautauqua Assembly Herald , for 
1896. 

2 An examination of the present catalog of the univers¬ 
ity shows that some prizes are now given. 



Studies in Religious Nurture. 


Again, he asserts: 

“ No prayer-meeting, no religion on earth 
can eradicate this monstrous tendency of 
selfishness which parents and teachers are 
ignorantly and prayerfully fostering.” 

Dr. Search, in his article on the “ Ethics of 
the Public School,” writes-thus: 

“ I have been thirty-five years in the 
schoolroom as teacher and pupil; have 
lived a good part of that time (with regret 
be it said) in the atmosphere of prizes and 
percents; have watched their false spur 
and unnatural coloring of character; have 
looked upon noble ambition perverted to 
things abnormal; have seen the physical, 
intellectual, and moral wreckage that en¬ 
sued ; and, as a result of personal obser¬ 
vation and personal experience, I do not 
hesitate to pronounce the whole system of 
incentives to which reference has been made, 
as abnormal, unprofitable, false, and im¬ 
moral. Their entire tendency is to tem¬ 
porary result, to stifled interest, to the rec¬ 
ognition of an unnatural means as an end, 
to the development of a selfish spirit and to 


238 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

dishonest practice, as well as to over-pressure 

and over-nervous and physical strain.” 

How long must this system be endured? 
Is there a possibility of relief from it and its 
effects ? There is, we believe ; for we believe 
there is that in human nature that will in 
the end lead to a response to an appeal to 
the higher nature, if at the proper time such 
appeal be made. Such responses have been 
made. Very refreshing, indeed, is the dedi¬ 
catory sentence of the book, “ A Study of the 
Sky,” by Dr. Herbert A. Howe, of the Uni¬ 
versity of Denver: 

TO HUNDREDS OF MY STUDENTS, 

WHOSE STEADFAST DEVOTION 

to their daily tasks 

IS A DELIGHTFUL MEMORY, 

THIS BOOK IS 

affectionately dedicated. 

Such dedication, if made to students who 
have been incited to effort by a system of 
external stimulation is most farcical. Ac¬ 
cepting it at its face value, how much of valid 
educational philosophy can be read into it; 
how much of genuine teaching and of habitu- 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 239 

ation to right motives can be found between 
the lines ! The task of achieving results such 
as this may not be the easiest of educational 
tasks. The line of least resistance in this case 
is that followed by the customs that so almost 
universally exist. The task of achieving re¬ 
sults along the line of greater resistance may 
indeed be more difficult, may demand the 
services of educational artists rather than of 
artisans, but it is possible of achievement. We 
believe that relief is more than possible, that 
it is probable. There are signs of promise in 
the bold declarations we have quoted, in the 
attitude of some persons prominent in educa¬ 
tional circles. These signs of promise are not 
more encouraging to those who hope for better 
things than is the response that is oftentimes 
given by parents to the expression of the 
larger hope. 

But in the meantime the homes can become 
a counteracting factor, if they feel the need of 
so doing. Most homes at present are co-oper¬ 
ating factors, however, and very intensely so 
at times. The home can very effectively 
guard the children against the dangers of the 


240 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

system, by cultivating a healthy lack of re¬ 
spect for such appeals, and by nourishing the 
natural motives that should prompt to effort. 
This rare bit of school-boy conversation fell 
upon our ears some years ago. One boy, 
speaking of some branch of study, said to his 
companion, “ I have seven c zipps ’ in that.” 
The companion’s reply was, “ Heavens ! ” 
We regret that we did not look into the con¬ 
ditions that made this conversation possible. 
For the boy who so complacently possessed the 
“ zipps ” we have admiration. Such boys are 
safe, only awaiting the touch of the artist 
teacher. Some such disregard for the system 
is at present the only safeguard . 




XIII 


THE AGE OF SPIRITUAL 
AWAKENING. 


i 





THE AGE OF SPIRITUAL 
AWAKENING. 


At what age shall we expect, or try to ob¬ 
tain, the spiritual awakening of children, 
whether the effort be put forth by home or 
by Bible School ? At what age shall we ex¬ 
pect or try to obtain that intensification of 
religious interest that shall express itself in a 
public confession of Jesus Christ in accordance 
with His injunction to confession as a badge of 
fellowship and of loyalty ? At what age shall 
we expect, or try to obtain, on the part of 
those who have been indifferent to the things 
of the spiritual life, a change in life attitude 
whereby the center of interest and of devotion 
shall pass from self to God and fellow-man ? 

These questions, and their variant forms, 
express the problem of our concern. 

The problem may be approached in either 
of two ways. 

There is, first, the ever open, easily traveled, 
ofttimes exalted, and, to many, peculiarly sat- 

(243) 


244 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

isfactory deductive way. Or, the way may be 
more descriptively characterized as the way of 
hasty generalization. The latter character¬ 
ization strips the way of a term that lends 
dignity to it, and at the same time calls our 
attention to its element of danger. 

The ease with which we rise to general 
principles which we deductively employ in 
individual cases is apparent to anyone on 
reflection. But this very ease should raise 
suspicions as to the validity of the process, 
Who has not heard persons speak with a con¬ 
viction that evidenced expectation of ministers’ 
children being worse than the children of the 
laity? Have you never known questionable, 
even immoral, actions to be excused on the 
ground that young men “ must sow their wild 
oats ” ? Hasty generalizations, these ; both 
far wide of the truth, and fraught with a 
potency for harm when deductively applied to 
individual cases. These are types of hasty 
generalizing. 

Whatever other elements enter into the ex¬ 
planation of the lodgment and of the dom- 
inancy of a hasty generalization, the following 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 245 

is often the process by which it takes up its 
sway. A thought comes rambling into our 
mind. It is our own thought, our conception, 
our theory. Swayed by the peculiar emotional 
thrill that accompanies thought products that 
can be labeled as our very own, we accept it, 
we apply it, we defend and propagate it, little 
thinking that our parentage to the thought 
demands unusual precaution in order that we 
may not view it through prejudiced eyes. The 
deductive application of the principle is legiti¬ 
mate ; the fallacy is found in the abbreviation, 
or complete elimination, of the inductive pro¬ 
cess whose product a principle should be. 

Thus a single bit of experience, unverified 
by repeated and closely scrutinized and inter¬ 
rogated instances in our later experience, or in 
the experience of others, comes frequently to be 
determinative of conduct, gaining in the num¬ 
ber of its adherents ; but ever having the same 
defects. For, the mere test of the numerical 
strength of the holders of a view or attitude is 
by no means an argument for the validity of 
that view or attitude. So long as mere asser¬ 
tion is sufficient to win adherents to the thing 


246 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

asserted, in entire disregard of the reasonable¬ 
ness or unreasonableness of the thing—at 
times in an apparently direct variation in the 
intensity of the adherence with the unreason¬ 
ableness of the thing adhered to—we need not 
be surprised to find error popularly acclaimed. 

This deductive way is the way traveled by 
many who claim to have come upon a solution 
to our problem. A limited experience, oft- 
times clothed in a “ my-experience-is ” state¬ 
ment uttered in a tone that is eloquent of final¬ 
ity; a limited experience that has been uninter¬ 
rogated in the light of theory or of a body of 
knowledge bearing on the subject; sometimes 
an interpretation of some portion of the Script¬ 
ures—often rather a misinterpretation due, 
among other things, to a mental warping by 
the heat of preconception; a flitting thought 
of how things might be done lodges and be¬ 
comes insistent; these, one or all, have con¬ 
tributed to establish views and attitudes held 
by some who very sincerely seek to further 
the Kingdom by means of the Bible School. 
That this is often the method of approach to 
the problem under consideration can be seen 


Studies hi Religious Nurture. 


247 


between the lines and in the logic of some 
things that have been written in very recent 
years. 

Among the answers to the problem that 
have been gotten in this way there is a marked 
discrepancy. Some would have all children 
wear “ regulation ” religious clothes, however 
ill fitting and uncomfortable they might be to 
the wearers ; others, apostle-like, would find no 
room in the Church for children—would de¬ 
mand an intellectual apprehension of a the¬ 
ological system as a necessary prerequisite to 
Church and Christian fellowship. 

But there is a second way of approach to 
our problem, a way more tedious, more diffi¬ 
cult, less traveled, yet withal more reliable and 
helpful. This second way of approach is by 
the way of the child, in whose nature there 
are to be found laws of growth and develop¬ 
ment that have been put there by the Creator, 
the author of the child’s nature, to the end 
that they might be used in securing the ends 
made possible to that nature by its author. 
Among these ends are to be included the ac¬ 
ceptance of the Christ as a personal Saviour, a 


248 Studies i 7 i Religious Nurture. 

declaration of loyalty to Him, and the enter¬ 
ing into that fellowship with the Father which 
brings the peace the world cannot understand, 
the fellowship to which Christ is the way. 

To eliminate this end from the ends possible 
to children, to make it less than our chief end, 
is to reduce the Bible School and its work to the 
level of an “ ethical culture ” cultus ; to do this 
is to give stones to those whose needs are asking 
of us bread. To eliminate this end, to refuse 
to let it be chief among the ends, is to deprive 
children of the chief dynamic whereby shall 
come into their lives and characters as perma¬ 
nent and abiding factors the virtues about 
which ethical culturists profess to concern 
themselves ; to say nothing about depriving the 
children of things which, though shunned by 
ethical culturists as beyond comprehension 
and therefore non-existent and non-operative, 
are known to many to be most precious and 
inspiring verities. 

The validity of this second way of approach¬ 
ing the problem can be assailed only by calling 
in question its fundamental postulate, namely, 
that there are laws of development that hold 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 249 

in the entire mental life, the term being used 
with an inclusiveness that embraces matters 
of the religious life. But though there are those 
who do not approach the problem by the sec¬ 
ond way, as is evidenced by their answers to 
the problem, we know of no one who under¬ 
takes to defend a proposed solution of the 
problem by denying the existence of such 
laws of growth as the second way of approach 
postulates. 

We deem it a gratuitous task to attempt a 
defence of this postulate, easy as such a de¬ 
fence would be, abundant as is the material 
out of which such a defence could be built. 
It is by the second way we have sought for 
light on the problem of The Age of Spiritual 
Awakening. 

Following a course of lectures given in the 
Summer Schools of the Pennsylvania Sabbath 
School Association in 1900, there occurred 
some discussion in which the conversion ages 
as set forth in curves taken from Professor 
Starbuck’s work 1 were questioned. This 

^‘Psychology of Religion.” Contemporary Science 
Series. —Scribners. 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 


questioning led to the study whose results are 
now to be given. 

The concern of the study is primarily with 
the question of the age at which an awaken¬ 
ing on the part of a young person should be 
looked for, should be sought after. For an 
answer to this question the needs of experi¬ 
ence call. 

Approximately ten thousand obituary no¬ 
tices from the Christian Advocate , of New 
York, were made accessible to us by Miss Jo¬ 
sephine L. Baldwin, the editor of the Memoir 
Department of the Advocate . These memoirs 
were carefully examined, with the result that 
almost five thousand were available for our 
study. There were 2276 available memoirs 
of men and 2542 of women. The memoirs 
cover all the decades of the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury, with the varying conditions of interests 
that may have existed at different times in the 
century. They represent various sections of 
the country, thus eliminating any element 
that by dominating a small section of country 
might materially affect the result of such a 
study. They have to do with those who hav^ 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 251 

been members of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. 

This study of this one phase of the ques¬ 
tion of spiritual awakening—the psychology 
of the question is not entered into at all—is 
different from other studies of the same phase 
of the question in two respects: in the very 
much greater number of cases studied, and in 
the fact that it has made possible the plotting of 
a curve of the awakenings of those who have 
been under influences that have made, or 
should have made, an atmosphere favorable to 
a growth of the religious phase of life. 

The “favorable home influence curve” is 
of special significance. And, in view of the 
significance attaching to it, it is to be regretted 
that it represents a comparatively small num¬ 
ber of cases. A study now under way prom¬ 
ises to increase largely the number of cases 
usable in studying the significance of early 
influences in determining the time of a de¬ 
cision or awakening. In the “favorable 
influence” curve there are represented 195 
men and 169 women. 


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258 Studies in Religious Nurture . 


If the curves stood alone with nothing of a 
corroborative nature to increase our faith in 
their reliability, we should doubtless be con¬ 
strained to feel that they have, at least, a 
measure of suggestiveness in them that relig¬ 
ious workers might well heed. But there are 
reasons for believing that they do not stand 
alone, that there are corroborative facts that 
emphasize these same stages of life and that 
tend by themselves to generate an expectation 
of religious significance attaching to the same 
years. 

An intellectual corroboration of certain 
years as marked off and differentiated from 
others is not easily defended, in view of the 
fact that the higher so-called “ faculties ” may 
early put themselves into evidence, the phe¬ 
nomena of sense perception being explainable 
in terms and processes of logic, as Com¬ 
missioner Harris has interestingly shown. 
Though such intellectual corroboration has 
been attempted, 1 the correspondence having 
been worked out in detail, we prefer to do little 
more than point out the fact that there is a 

1 “ Psychology of Religion.”—Starbuck, page 34 ff. 



Studies in Religious Nurture. 


ge 7 ieral corroboration of the curves that may 
be found in the realm of intellect. Beyond 
this we do not now care to go, not wishing to 
weaken our contention by the introduction of 
elements that themselves need to be defended* 
that cannot by any means be regarded as 
established. 

There are, however, two classes of facts that 
seem to serve as corroborators of the awakening 
curves. These classes of facts are the ones 
that grow out of, or connect themselves with, 
physical growth and the precocity of girls. 

The curves for increase in weight are the 
average curves plotted from the results of 
measurements by Bowditch and Roberts. 1 
They are copied here with approximate cor¬ 
rectness. An examination of these curves 
(Fig. V. and Fig. VI.) in comparison with the 
awakening curves (Fig. I. and Fig. II.) shows 
a very pronounced correspondence between 
the two sets of curves, though the correspond¬ 
ence is not perfect and in detail. Activity in 
physical growth seems to parallel activity in 
spiritual growth. Curves for increase in 
1 “ Growth of the Brain.”—Donaldson, page 56. 


260 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

height show in a much less satisfactory way, 
yet they show that there is an approach to a 
side-by-sidedness on the part of the physical 
and the spiritual elements in human nature. 

The memoir curves show a precocity in 
girls in matters of the spiritual life. The 
same precocity of girls is found when we 
turn to the intellectual and to the physical 
realms. 

Here, again, the intellectual corroboration 
has not been satisfactorily demonstrated, 
though we believe it to be possible of demon¬ 
stration. Speaking of this form of precocity, 
* Dr. Havelock Ellis, in his elaborate study of 
men and women, says : 

“There is good reason to believe that 
girls are more precocious in intelligence 
than boys. ... It would be in harmony 
with what we know of the physical devel¬ 
opment of the sexes, and it has been ob¬ 
served independently.” 1 
But the independent observation here re¬ 
ferred to is as yet rather too limited for us 
to get from it more than a strong indication 
1 “ Man and Woman,” page 177. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 261 

of what is likely to be positively and satisfac¬ 
torily established in the near future. 

In the case of physical precocity there is no 
such uncertainty. One can here speak of 
“what we know.” The various height and 
weight curves that have been plotted all teach 
this fact of physical precocity. (Compare 
Figs. V. and VI.) When we turn to the 
matter of pubertal development we find the 
same facts existing, the same law holding. 
Dr. Ellis speaks of 

“. . . the general rule that the evolution 
of puberty is more precocious in girls than 
in boys, being both begun and completed 
at an earlier age.” 1 

Though one might contend that there is 
little of value in this corroboration of the 
curves, it is hardly conceivable that one of 
open mind could reflect on these corroborative 
facts and escape the inference that there is in 
the curves a measure of suggestiveness that 
religious workers may well ponder. 

In the interpretation of the curves under 
consideration we are concerned at present with 

1 “ Man and Woman,” page 36. 


262 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

one thing alone, i. e ., the practical guidance 
they may yield us as we concern ourselves 
with the religious nurture of the young. Nor 
is this a disclaimer of a scientific interest in 
the problem. For the function of science is 
said to be threefold. Science is primarily a 
gatherer of facts. At whatever cost, whatever 
the risk, whatever the superstructure to be 
built upon or by means of them, science seeks 
for the facts of the universe. But it refuses 
to be satisfied with facts, however great the 
mass of them may be. It seeks by means of 
comparison, analysis and synthesis to group 
the facts, to reach generalizations, the validity 
of which can be tested and relied upon in the 
affairs of life. Science is an organizer of 
guidance, of helpfulness, by whose aid one can 
deal with experiences of to-day in the light 
of experiences of the past, thus avoiding 
the groping and uncertainty that character¬ 
ized those past experiences. Beyond this 
gathering of facts and this organizing of guid¬ 
ance out of the gathered facts, science is a 
projector of hypotheses, by the aid of which 
it seeks to peer behind the facts, to look at the 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 263 

sources whence the facts have come to be. In 
all three of these functions science encounters 
limitations, but most of all does it encounter 
them in the third. Yet it is in the realm of 
the third function that we find, in the name of 
science, arrogance and assumption and over¬ 
weening confidence. It is in this realm that 
antagonisms to spiritual things arise, that 
faith is tabooed. And, too, it is in this very 
realm that science makes most peremptory de¬ 
mand for faith on the part of worshipers in 
its temple. A failure to distinguish among 
the three tones in the voice of science, which, 
one ahead of “ Orator Puff,” speaks now in 
one tone, now in another, now in another 
still, causes confusion and perplexity. If we 
will give to science speaking in the voice of its 
third function the same hearing we give it 
when it speaks in either of the other voices, 
we shall surely be led astray many times. 
And the tendency to exalt hypotheses into 
the dignity and into the function of general¬ 
izations is abroad—is to be found in educa¬ 
tional and in theological thought. The fact 
that we prefer to call to our aid none of the 


264 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

educational hypotheses as we approach an in¬ 
terpretation of the curves should not lead 
to a rejection of the messages the curves have 
for us. We elect to remain in the first two 
realms of science in this study. Nor can this 
be construed into a denial of the legitimacy of 
the third realm. Its legitimacy cannot be de¬ 
nied. Nor can we grant its serviceability for 
our present purpose. 

These are the messages of the curves as we 
hear them : 

(1) There is a possibility of a late-in-life 
spiritual awakening. Blessed assurance to 
those interested in the mature and in the aged 
who have not as yet enlisted in the King’s 
army! This is the teaching of God’s word, 
too. It is never too late for an awakened soul 
seeking the Christ to find Him. We may work 
and pray with some reason to hope, so long 
as our impenitent loved ones, or friends, live. 

But this possibility is limited, or offset, by 
an ever-increasing preponderance of improba¬ 
bility, the very thought of which appalls, and 
should be to us an inspiration to effort while 
the day is, before the night comes. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 265 

This gliding of the curves downward and 
still downward almost to zero spells out to a 
reflective mind the significance of “ to-day 
. . . harden not your hearts.” There is in 
these curves for those beyond the age of six¬ 
teen nothing whatever that can be pressed 
into support of the tendency to delay a de¬ 
cision of this most vital of all life’s questions 
—the question of the soul’s right adjustment 
to God through Jesus Christ. 

(2) The possibility of a very early awak¬ 
ening is shown by the curves, and, in view of 
the Master’s attitude to children, should not 
be forgotten. But the tendency of to-day is 
rather to over-emphasize the Master’s attitude ; 
interpreting it with an intensity which, though 
it accords with some preconceptions, is not 
made necessary, if it is at all justified by the 
word of God. As a corrective to this-tendency 
the curves remind us of the overwhelming 
preponderance of improbability of a very early 
awakening. 

(3) There are ages at which an awakening 
is more probable than at any other age. This 
fact is read from the crests of the curves. 


266 Studies in Religious Nitrture. 

These ages of marked, or increased, probability 
of an awakening cast themselves into a series 
showing the decreasing probability. These 
series for men and for women are as follows : 



First. 

Second. 

Third. 

Fourth. 

Fifth. 

Sixth. 

Men . 

Women. 

16 

14 

18 

16 

20 

18 

14 (?) 

12 

12 

20 

0 0 
M M 


(4) Whatever science shall finally say as to 
the differences or resemblances between men 
and women, and especially as to their spiritual 
nature, the curves show an earlier maturity of 
that spiritual nature in women than in men . 
They should, therefore, be treated from a dif¬ 
ferent standpoint from that of men, and men 
from that of women. To expect a son to 
mature at the age at which a daughter does, 
or a daughter to mature at the age at which 
a son matures, is to ignore the lesson of the 
curves, and perhaps to work damage that can 
be retrieved with difficulty, if at all. 

(5) The curves of those whose homes were 
favorable to religious growth may not have 














Studies in Religious Nurture. 267 

the same reliability as those of the general 
curves, because of the smaller number of cases 
represented by them. But with what relia¬ 
bility they have they emphasize the impor¬ 
tance of the home as a factor, not in changing 
the crest years , but in securing a larger per¬ 
centage of awakenings at the earlier crest ages , 
in the case of men and women alike. The 
persistence of the crest ages as the waves roll 
higher at the earlier years is a phenomenon 
worthy of further study, and one that affords 
opportunity for the exercise of the function 
of hypothetical reasoning. These favorable- 
influence curves in no way detract from the 
magical significance of home. How plainly 
and with what Biblical correctness and corre¬ 
spondence they spell out the worth-whileness 
of parental and home religion ! 

The graphic representation of the potency 
of favorable early influences upon the age of 
spiritual awakening is shown by a comparison 
of Figs. III. and IV. with Figs. I. and II. re¬ 
spectively. 

With the general curves as the basis of com¬ 
parison, the pronounced elevation of the 


268 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

favorable-influence curves at and before the 
age of sixteen and the consequent and to-be- 
expected depression of the same after sixteen 
will not fail to be noticed. This fact bears upon 
a very recent deliverance of psychology as it 
seeks to reinforce the pulpit.—There are many 
ways in which such reinforcement is possible. 

Professor Starbuck, in an article whose cap¬ 
tion is more “catchy” or “taking” than it is 
expressive of truth, an article which over-zeal- 
ously contends for its contention, says: 

“. . . It looks as if children were predes¬ 
tined to attain, on an average, a certain 
efficiency at a definite time, regardless of 
what one does. . . . Nature has decreed its 
time. Thus it is that there are fixed times 
and seasons in religious maturity. This 
fact is set forth conclusively, I believe, in 
the studies that have been made upon the 
most frequent time of spiritual awakening. 
(See, for example, my volume, ‘ The Psycho¬ 
logy of Religion.’) It makes no difference 
in what part of the country people live, to 
what denomination they belong, or whether 
or not they have been subject to stimulating 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 269 


influences , the age of most frequent religious 
awakening is about the same year.” 1 [Ital¬ 
ics ours.] 

There are two features of this article to 
which exception may be taken. 

The first feature is that of the implication 
of the caption—predestination determined by 
“the nature processes.” There is in the 
legitimate interpretation of conversion curves 
no intimation of a predestination of any kind, 
unless of a kind not defined clearly by the 
author and not connoted by the term as com¬ 
monly used. Surely little of helpfulness is to 
be gained by either the pulpit or psychology 
from a using of terms that do not apply in their 
accepted connotation and whose new and 
vaguely intimated significance can be ex¬ 
pressed more clearly by the use of words 
whose meaning is plain. The article does no 
more in the line of “predestination” than 
demonstrate that there is a greater probability 
of one’s spiritual awakening occurring at some 
ages than at others. 

1 “ Psychological Predestination.”—Homiletic Review, 
September, 1906. 


270 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

As a means of accounting for “ predestina¬ 
tion,” the author resorts to heredity, and in 
doing so minimizes the function of nurture, or 
environment. He thinks from reading the 
study of twins, by Galton, that 

“One is compelled to sympathize with 
Galton’s conclusions: ‘ There is no escape 
from the conclusion that nature prevails 
enormously over nurture, when differences 
of nurture do not exceed what is commonly 
to be found among persons of the same rank 
of society and in the same country.’ ” 

Thus is nurture minimized. But there is a 
fact connected with Galton’s study that ought 
to be made prominent. He studied the fol¬ 
lowing classes of cases: 

I. Twins alike in early years and educated 

together = Similar nature and similar 
nurture . 

II. Twins “exceedingly unlike in child¬ 
hood,” and “having the same home, 
the same associates, the same teachers, 
and in every other respect the same sur¬ 
roundings.” — Dissimilar nature and 
similar nurture . 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 271 

But these classes of cases do not exhaust 
the possibilities of the study of twins. There 
are yet two other possibilities: 

I. —III. Twins similar in nature subjected 

to dissimilar nurture. 

II. —IV. Twins dissimilar in nature sub¬ 

jected to dissimilar nurture. 

Might it not be that if these classes of cases 
were to be studied a modification of the con¬ 
clusions would be necessary ? Similar treat¬ 
ment of children of dissimilar endowment 
would tend to continue the dissimilarity, as 
would similar treatment of similarly endowed 
children tend to continue the similarity. And, 
finding similarity and dissimilarity in these 
respective classes after a similar treatment does 
not justify a conclusion against nurture and in 
favor of nature. Nature alone was varied in Gal- 
ton’s study. Nurture should have been varied 
as well. Had this been done and the respective 
similarity and dissimilarity of classes III. and 
IV. continued, one could have accepted the 
conclusions; for, as Galton himself concedes, 

“ It seems contrary to all experience that 
nurture should go for little.” 


272 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

Over against this fatalism of heredity— 
spelled with a capital by many—there is a 
tendency abroad among scientific workers to 
give due prominence to nurture. L,et us hear 
some testimonies, none of which denies a 
potency to heredity, all of which assert a 
potency for nurture. 

“ Moreover, heredity is not the grim ogre it 
seemed in the Elsie Venner days, when the 
great applications of biological discoveries 
to humanity were first made. We know 
that the influences of environment and of 
education [nurture] can modify the stuff of 
humanity, physically, mentally and morally, 
in simply a marvelous degree.” 1 
Dr. Oppenheim 2 re-works over some of the 
Dugdale material relative to the “Jukes” 
family in such a way as to show the large part 
nurture must have played in the history of 
this notorious family, usually used to point a 
moral along the line of heredity alone. In 
his work on “ The Development of the Child,” 
(page 92), we read: 

Moral Education.”—E. H. Griggs, page 184. 

2 “ The Development of the Child,” page 189 f. 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 273 

“ Instead of saying, c L,ike father, like son,’ 
one rather should say, ‘ As lives the father, 
so lives the son.’ ” 

Guyau says : 

“ Suggestion [but one factor in nurture], 
which creates artificial instincts, capable of 
keeping in equilibrium the hereditary in¬ 
stincts, or even of stifling them, constitutes a 
new power, comparable to heredity itself.” 1 
Drummond places the two factors under 
consideration upon the same plane, saying: 

“ These two, Heredity and Environment, 
are the master influences of the organic 
world. These have made all of us what we 
are. These forces are still ceaselessly play¬ 
ing upon all our lives.” 2 
Thus do we find that there is very respecta¬ 
ble authority for refusing to be fatalists in 
our attitude to the problems of the spiritual 
life and its nurture. And to us the attitude 
that duly emphasizes nurture is the more 
hopeful attitude, the one from which there 

1 “ Heredity and Education,” xxiv. 

2 “ Natural Law in the Spiritual World,” chapter on 
Environment. 

18 


274 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

comes inspiration to effort in tlie nurture of the 
young. Rather than accept the doctrine of 
“ predestination ” through heredity, as long as 
the fact has not been demonstrated, we prefer 
to hold, with Chamberlain, that 

“Heredity, unless it is pathological, can 
be conquered, for it has nothing absolutely 
fatal about it.” 1 [Italics ours.] 

The second feature of the article on 
psychological predestination to which excep¬ 
tion is taken is that of the theory that it does 
not matter, after all, what we do to or with 
young people. The time of their awaken¬ 
ing is fixed, and fixed irrespective of influ¬ 
ences. 

In refutation of this we are willing to let 
the favorable-influence curves speak. They 
clearly show that at least one line of influence 
is potent, even to a disorganization of curves 
plotted in disregard of this factor. We feel 
sure that these curves are in line with the 
facts of growth and development. There re¬ 
tardation or acceleration, within limits, hard to 

144 The Child—A Study in the Evolution of Man,” 
page 8i. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 275 

be fixedly set, is possible. The curves say the 
same is true of spiritual growth. 

There are two antagonistic tendencies that 
have had eminence in the religious nurture 
of children. Each of these tendencies is vig¬ 
orously defended by its adherents, at times, by 
means of the application, or misapplication, of 
Bible teachings. Both of these tendencies are 
dangerous and are alike unsupported by reason 
and by the Bible’s teachings. The fact that 
these tendencies may be sanctioned by prac¬ 
tice in ignorance of the fallacies that underlie 
them, in ignorance of the disastrous effects 
that may follow their employment, in no way 
mitigates the results. Ignorance never re¬ 
lieves the one who violates God’s laws from 
suffering the penalty of that violation. God’s 
laws are inexorable and cannot be violated 
with impunity. 

The first of these mutually antagonistic 
tendencies is that tendency that makes for the 
repression of a spiritual awakening that has 
become existent. That such repression is 
possible we need not argue. That it is actual 
in many instances we all know too well. 


276 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

This tendency roots itself in the wholly 
gratuitous assumption that the comprehen¬ 
sion of a theological system, with or without 
its metaphysics, is a necessary prerequisite to 
Church fellowship and to the public enroll¬ 
ment for the service of Christ. Thus rooted, it 
grows vigorously until it demands of the young 
persons a religious experience and growth that 
should characterize those of more mature 
minds, or a knowledge of a system of relig¬ 
ious thought that is beyond their comprehen¬ 
sion. 

The result is a temporary refusal to admit to 
fellowship, accompanied by more or less sin¬ 
cere injunctions to “ wait awhile,” “ wait till 
you understand,” and others of this ilk. Ex¬ 
pressions such as these with which young 
people are forbidden the privilege of publicly 
confessing Christ are the fruitage of this ten¬ 
dency. 

The curves are against this attitude; they 
are strong and uncompromising in their opposi¬ 
tion. More than eight (8) per cent, of all the 
plotted awakenings of men occurred before or 
at twelve (12) years of age. Of the awaken- 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 277 

ings of women, more than sixteen (16) per 
cent, occurred before or at twelve (12) years 
of age. When we turn to the favorable-home- 
influence curves these percentages rise from 
eight (8) to almost twenty-one (21) for men 
and from sixteen (16) to almost thirty-seven 
(37) for women. 

The curves, in their antagonism to this ten¬ 
dency to repress an early awakening, are sup¬ 
ported by three lines of argument: ( a) the 
law of habituation; ( b ) the law of repressed 
interests ; (e) the pathetic voice of experience. 

In the light of the law of habituation we 
should expect early awakenings to be followed 
by lives unusually free from backsliding; for 
a large part of the philosophy of backsliding, if 
not the whole of it, is to be found in the fact of 
a negative habituation to spiritual things, the 
gift of early years to the more mature years of 
life. Our expectations, deductions from our 
knowledge of habit, are fully borne out in 
life. All the early awakenings studied in our 
curves were the beginning of, or a stage in 
the development of, a loyal, life-long service 
of Jesus Christ. The later careers of these 


278 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

early awakened persons show a percentage of 
backsliding that flutters around the zero point. 

A second fact that supports the curves as they 
plead with us not to repress an early awaken¬ 
ing is found in the results of such repression. 

Arguing from the unity of human nature, 
whereby analogies from other realms of mind 
hold in its spiritual realm, we should fear 
that the results of such repression would be 
disastrous. Professor James says : 

“In all pedagogy the great thing is to 
strike the iron while hot, and to seize the 
wave of the pupil’s interest in each suc¬ 
cessive subject before its ebb has come.” 
Another writer, Prof. E. B. Bryan, puts the 
same truth, stripped of the poetry which 
makes Prof. James’ writings so delightful, 
into the following uncolored terms : 

“ If children at certain times have a long¬ 
ing for, or show an aptitude in, drawing, 
music, manual training, athletics, etc., but 
are deprived of the opportunity for culture 
along those lines, they are apt to lose their 
interest, or aptitude, or both. ” 1 
1 “ Pedagogical Seminary,” Vol, VII., page 358. 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 


279 


Are, then, our fears of a similar result in 
spiritual repression justified ? Does the same 
law pervade all realms of our nature ? The 
same law does hold in the spiritual realm ; and 
our fears are abundantly justified. 

L,et the vision of a sweet, spiritual-faced, 
elderly lady rise before us. She comes for¬ 
ward from the audience at the close of a study 
of the theme we are now considering, to say 
to him who has pleaded as earnestly as he could 
plead against the tendency towards spiritual 
repression: 

“ I want to tell you how true your con¬ 
tention is. My husband and I are members 

of the-Church. Our boy, when he was 

twelve, came to us asking permission to 
join the Church. We thought he was not 
old enough, and asked him to wait awhile.” 
The fountains of the heart burst forth. With 
tear-filled eyes she adds : 

“ He is thirty now, and oh ! how anxious 
we are for him to come ! How earnestly 
we pray for it! ” 

The curves say that at thirty years only one 
and one-half (1 y 2 ) per cent, of the spiritual 



280 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

awakenings take place for men; at twelve 
years, and in Christian homes, seven and one- 
fourth per cent, of men’s awakenings 

occur. Pity the poor mother ; the crosses that 
are hardest to bear are those that have added 
to their weight the consciousness that we our¬ 
selves have shaped and fashioned them. 

The anxious mother is a type. 

The second tendency referred to is the an¬ 
tagonist of this, that of spiritual over-pressure, 
over-stimulation. This tendency grows luxu¬ 
riantly, feeding upon the very material by 
which the former tendency is destroyed. This 
is the tendency that threatens soon to displace 
the former entirely, and that will, by the prin¬ 
ciple of reaction, sooner or later, if unchecked, 
lead anew to the cultivation of the displaced 
tendency. 

We fall back on the analogy between the 
spiritual and other realms of mental activity 
—an analogy that rests on the unity of our 
mental life, on the essential mental-process- 
sameness between spiritual things and things 
not so classed. 

Falling back on this analogy, what do we 


Studies in Religious Nicrture. 281 

find? Over-pressure is regarded as possible 
and as actual, as operating with direful conse¬ 
quences, physical, mental, and moral. Charles 
Dickens, in his classic upon Over-pressure in 
Education, “ Dombey and Son,” has forcibly 
portrayed alike the physical death and the 
mental stagnation that may and often do re¬ 
sult from what he calls a “ hot-house process ” 
in education. The subject of over-pressure 
has been studied by governmental direction in 
several European countries, and the Kaiser, 
in person, addressed the schoolmasters of his 
realm upon the matter. Allowing for highly- 
colored statement of the facts, we must 
conclude that it is possible, ofttimes actual, 
and, whenever existent, harmful. 

All this is symptomatic. Disease lurks 
back of it. We are impatient for results, want 
results that show and lend themselves to tabu¬ 
lation and display. We worship precocity, 
and chafe under the divinely wisely-established 
plan of a long stage of preparation for the 
young of the human kind before it enters 
upon the fullness of maturity, and because of 
which it enters upon the greater fullness of 


282 Studies in Religious Nurture . 

maturity. We want to aid and hurry on the 
unfolding of the plant or bud; and, though 
we know that to do so would mar the perfec¬ 
tion of the leaf or flower, it is with difficulty 
that we restrain ourselves and entrust the leaf 
or flower to the laws of its own unfolding. 

We have learned that the beauty of the 
moth depends upon its being allowed to follow 
the laws of its nature, and that one touch of 
the would-be helpful hand both mars the 
beauty of the wing and takes away the power 
of flight. We are not as yet so wise in our 
dealing with children; have not learned that 
half of our lesson that teaches us to “ let 
alone and trust nature more.” 

Guided by a preconception we are in dan¬ 
ger of unduly hastening the development of 
the spiritual nature of children; of treating 
them as if there were no laws of their nature 
upon which reliance could be placed. Be¬ 
cause of this children have been made, by hot¬ 
house religious processes, to simulate the 
experience and the testimony of adults, a thing 
that is abnormal and undesirable and dan¬ 
gerous. 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 283 

Sir Aubrey De Vere, in “The Crusade,” 
speaking of the effort made by the children, 
says: 

“ Alas ! its lovely pageant, as a dream, 

Faded ! They sank not through ignoble fear, 

They felt not Moslem steel. By mountain stream, 

In sands, in fens, they died—no mother near.” 

Pathetic demonstration of the fact that 
children can be made to simulate adult 
life-attitudes. The skillful child-evangelist, 
using methods that too largely use, or better 
say abuse, the laws of suggestion, can make 
a very spectacular display of child “conver¬ 
sions.” 

An acquaintance, a trained kindergartner, 
one who shares with her husband his deep and 
practical interest in the problems of religious 
nurture, shuddered as she related to the writer 
the things she saw done in a city mission un¬ 
der the care of herself and husband. The 
things described were done by a professional 
child-evangelist. The things he did produced 
“results” that might be made to produce 
conclusive reading in defence of child-evangel¬ 
ism of a professional and revivalistic type. 


284 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

Alas! the crimes against childhood, com¬ 
mitted by church and by school^ that can be 
atoned for by a spectacular display of results ! 
But the record of such children’s futures will, 
we fear, not “flutter near the zero mark in 
backsliding.” And such persons, whether 
hot-housed at home or in church, once back¬ 
slidden, grow cold and intensely indifferent to 
the claims of the Church. Cannot many of 
us testify to this ? 

The message of the curves to us when 
tempted to over-stimulate, to employ pressure, 
to resort to the hot-house with children—the 
message is, “ Do not. There is a time for 
pressure ; use it then.” 

The percentage of awakenings of men be¬ 
fore twelve under favorable home-influence is 
twenty-one (21) per cent.; for women, thirty- 
seven (37) per cent. Over against these stand 
seventy-nine (79) per cent of the men not 
awakened, despite the home influences, after 
twelve (12), of the women sixty-three (63) per 
cent. 

Shall we then be indifferent to the religious 
nurture of children under twelve, as has been 


Studies in Religious Nurtitre . 285 

cogently, if illogically, argued by some? By 
no means. There is no age in one’s life when 
the spiritual nature can be safely treated with 
indifference and with neglect. When Dr. E. 
G. Lancaster says: 

“ Religion must not be neglected. The 
welfare of the family and the state depend 
upon it as much as the interests of the in¬ 
dividual soul,” 1 

he excepts no age during which we, either in the 
name of science or because of society’s needs, 
may neglect with safety the matter of religion. 

But the farmer who sows his grain in the 
fall is not indifferent to the fruitage time of 
the following summer. That • I do not open 
the bud of beautiful promise is no evidence 
of my indifference to it and its flower of rare 
beauty to be. That I refuse to force its petals 
from the closely compact, natural arrangement 
is no proof that I have not dug about the 
stalk in the spring time, giving it such food as 
it needed; is no proof that I have not been 
watchful of the animal life that is an enemy 
to the perfection of the flower. 

1 “ Pedagogical Seminary,” July, 1897, page 128. 


286 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

Nor is the fact that we are not to unduly 
disturb the unfolding religious nature of chil¬ 
dren at early years an argument against our 
sowing seed, and digging and feeding the soul 
plant on which we hope to see the fragrant, 
beautiful bloom of a public confession of Jesus 
Christ. 

If I concern myself about keeping the soul- 
plant in the light of the truth of God as it is 
revealed in Jesus Christ, about environing it 
with an atmosphere that is surcharged with 
love to God and to fellow-men; if I procure 
for it food that will nourish the positive ele¬ 
ments of its nature, and am careful to allow it 
ample exercise in accordance with its strength 
in resisting the winds that blow upon it; if I 
do these things I am not neglecting the nur¬ 
ture of the soul-plant. And some day, the 
probability is, I shall see blossoms and fruit 
upon the plant. 

As this thought was being presented to a 
Bible School convention, some years ago, 
there sat in the audience a pastor who seemed 
to the speaker to be antagonistic to the view¬ 
point and the procedure growing out of it. 


Studies in Religious Nurture . 287 

At the close of the service he went to the one 
who had been contending that religious work¬ 
ers should concern themselves about matters 
of pure soul-atmosphere, healthful and nour¬ 
ishing food and adequate soul-exercise, and 
said to him : “I have five children who are 
servants of Christ. All five came to Him in 
just this way.” 

The memoir material emphasizes a fact 
about which the curves themselves are silent. 
There are many possible forms which the 
awakening, when it comes, may take. We 
should expect this. Numerous are the tem¬ 
peraments of men; almost as numerous are 
these reactions to the Spirit’s influence. No 
one reaction should be exalted to a norma¬ 
tive rank. Yet this is often done, and in very 
intense terms and ways. 

Strange as it may seem, in our emphasis of 
one or another of the various spiritual expe¬ 
riences accompanying the awakening, we have 
too largely ignored a fact the memoirs urge us 
to consider. We have placed the emphasis 
on conversion, on a remarkable religious ex¬ 
perience, on a religious “storm and stress 


288 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

period,” on a great soul conflict, ere one’s 
allegiance to the cross is complete. We have 
done this, too, to the disparagement of cases 
in which these elements have not been found. 

An anxious father, a clergyman, sits by the 
bedside of his dying daughter, she about 
twelve years old. “ She had been a bright, 
joyous girl, carefully trained, and all her life 
associated with the worship and instruction of 
God’s house,” but he had never known of any 
“ experiences ” in her life that he could hon¬ 
estly consider her conversion. 

This is the thing we mean. One way only— 
perhaps the way of her father, who may have 
spent his earlier years in sin and waywardness. 

It is with mingled indignation for, and 
sympathy with, the father that we read the 
incident and hear him ask, “ My dear, have 
you found Jesus? ” 

Ponder the answer of the child, as she turns 
her eyes upon her father, saying, u When did 
I lose Him , father ? ” 

The possibility of one’s never having had a 
consciousness of having lost the Christ, of hav¬ 
ing been estranged from Him, exists, according 


Studies in Religious Nurture. 289 

to the abundant testimony of the memoirs. 
So abundant is this testimony that we are 
firm in our conviction that this is the ideal, 
the normal way, and that all others , necessary 
as they are because of defective soul nurture , 
are abnormalities—deviations from God's fun¬ 
damental plan. 

Set in a setting of delightful and pedagog- 
ically suggestive fiction, the following lines 
from Kate Douglas Wiggins contain at once 
good religious pedagogy, safe and sound the- 
ology, and excellent common sense. And, sup¬ 
ported by the memoir material, we commend 
the message of the lines to our fellow co¬ 
workers with God for the saving of the chil¬ 
dren through nurture. She says, in “ Rebecca 
of Sunny brook Farm ” : 

“ To become sensible of oneness with the 
Divine Heart before any sense of separation 
has been felt, this is surely the most beauti¬ 
ful way for the child to find God.” 

Nor is this way merely a matter of beauty. 

Professor Coe’s putting of this truth is as 
follows : 1 

1 “ Religion of a Mature Mind,” page 210. 


19 


290 Studies in Religious Nurture. 

“ Some, who should be counted happiest 
of all, have never known a negative period. 
Taught from infancy to count themselves 
the Lord’s, they have never had any other 
fundamental preference.” 

It would seem, other lines of argument 
aside, that to reject this way as a way of find¬ 
ing God is to do two things : 

(1) To limit the Holy Spirit’s power, thus 
making Him unable to work out His fruits in 
the lives of children. 

(2) To make more difficult the Holy Spirit’s 
work of conversion, because of habituation, 
and thus lessen the probability of the occur¬ 
rence of conversion. This result the curves 
very plainly demonstrate. 

There are three injunctions given by the 
Master that have an application here. He 
said: 

“ Go out . . . and compel them to come 
in.” 

We must heed this injunction. But to 
build upon it alone a practice or system of 
dealing with men in trying to bring them to 
the cross would be to repeat a mistake already 



Studies in Religious Nurture . 291 

too frequently made in the history of the¬ 
ological discussion—the mistake of building 
upon an inadequate foundation, as if a few 
words were sufficient to describe in all its 
matchless perfection the Father’s Plan of 
Redemption. 

He also said: 

“ Suffer the little children to come unto 
me.” 

Thus does He seem to teach that our work 
with the children is rather that of removing 
from their way obstructions to their coming. 
He here certainly rebukes all those who hold 
the you-are-too-young attitude. And, as we 
understand the injunction, there is in it no 
sanction for the hot-house, forcing processes 
that parade in display their “ results.” 

It was the same Teacher who said: 


“ Feed my lambs.” 







AFTER-WORD. 


Some of these studies were prepared for 
presentation at conventions, others for publi¬ 
cation in a periodical. Because of this fact 
an element of repetition entered into them 
which has been eliminated only in part. 

The author’s indebtedness to the literature 
of the subject has been carefully acknowledged 
in the references. 

To Miss Josephine L,. Baldwin, who sug¬ 
gested the use of the Christian Advocate 
Memoirs, and who furnished the Memoir files ; 
and to Mr. William J. Semelroth, who as 
editor of the World Evangel kindly permitted 
the use of material that had appeared in the 
Evangel , the author gratefully acknowledges 
his indebtedness. 

A. B. B. V. O. 

Norwood, Pa., 

March, 1908. 





























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